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THE AMERICAN 
JSOLDIER 

^ Studies in Army Life 

By CHARLES M. SKINNER. 

tJiH 


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236 


THE 


AMERICAN 

SOLDIER; 

I Studies in Army Life. 

< ' ... 

By CHARLES M. SKINNER, 

Staff Correspondent of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 


ILLUSTRATED. 


OFFICE OF PUBLICATION, 

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Entered at the Brooklyn-New Yoi’k Post Office as Second Class Matter. Vol. XVI.,, No. 9, of the Eagle Library. 
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\ 

Contents^ 




The Kecruit................. 3 


Garrisons on the Seaboard..... 7 


Frontier Posts................. 11 


Aboard a Transport....—. 15 


Our Foreign Service ....._____ .v... 19 


The Hospital Service..... 22 


.'■i 


Homes for Old Soldiers.... 26 


The Officer.... 31 


Military Prisons and Schools. 35 


In Camp: A Memory... 39 



( 






















The Recruit 


F all Institutions In 
this country, the 
Army has, till re¬ 
cently, suffered the 
most hostility and 
neglect. Regardless 
of the ethics of ex¬ 
pansion, there is no 
question that It is to 
result In one good, 
and that is a wider 
knowledge of our 
military force and a 
better desert of sympathy for the men who 
niEke it, both those who wear the blouses of 
the enlisted men and the men whose shoul¬ 
ders are decorated with the insignia of rank. 

The Army, small as it is, in proportion to 
the territory it guards and the population it 
represents, is the strQng right arm of the 
nation. It has done the disagreeable work 
that has fallen to it without brag, shirking 
or complaint, yet who knows what that work 
has been, or what manner of men have done 
it? If the average young citizen were asked 
who took Cuba, he would probably say it 
was Theodore Roosevelt, yet as a matter of 
fact, the Colonel took only a part of it. There 
were men at El Caney and San Juan who 
worked just as hard, and wrote no books and 
delivered no lectures afterward. Indeed, 
some of them never did anything afterward, 
for they remain in the earth in Cuba to this 
day, and except among their comrades, their 
names are hardly known. They saw their 
duty and did it. Noble littfe army! 

The volunteers are entitled to no end of 
praise; they have given up employments 
that involved losses far larger than the av¬ 
erage of the regulars are called upon to 
make; they have given up homes, which are 
things that the regular of long service knows 
only from hearsay; and therein consists the 
undue share of fame which the volunteer has 
receiveo, as compared with that of the pro¬ 
fessional fighter. The volunteers carry 
with them the love and admiration of 
their home folk. Every one in Hack- 
etts’ Four Corners knows every mem¬ 
ber of D Company, Twenty-fifth Regi¬ 
ment of Volunteers, but where is the man of 
any town who knows two men in the whole 
Twenty-fifth Regiment of the United States 
Infantry. The member of the volunteer regi¬ 
ment is wreathed and eulogized, and when ho 
goes home in a box the whole town attends 
the funeral and piles flowers on his coffin. 
The regular, after a life of battle and hard¬ 
ship and earnest, willing work, goes to 
his end with a bullet in his head, is buried 
Wiiere he fell, and bis name is printed in an 



official list. That’s all. Yet who has ever 
heard the regular complain of his neglect? 
He takes what comes and says nothing. 



One of Uncle Sam’s Boys. 

though what comes may be bullets or em¬ 
balmed beef. 

But the acquisitions 

OUR ARMY in territory which this 

yijC PCQT country has made of 

I Dtol render it impos- 

IM THE WORLD. sibie that the Army 

.. ' should be kept at the 

old standard of ineffective numbers and mea¬ 
ger governmental sustenance. It is not a 


thing to be toyed with, for political effect, but 
an institution to be considered with serious¬ 
ness and honor: the best Army, take it all in 
all, that is to be found in the world to-day. 
This is no mere boast, made because it sounds 
well to .4merican ears, but because thoughtful 
and impartial study and comparison with 
j other armies prove ours to be superior in per¬ 
sonnel and power of work. American marks¬ 
manship is conceded to be the best, and if 
there are fewer frills and incantations than 
there were in the days of fuss and feathers, 
it is a blessed relief. If there are errors in 
the direction of too severe discipline—sur¬ 
vivals of military traditions that pertain to 
times and nations in which the soldier was a 
slave—they are still milder than the re¬ 
straints that prevail in the armies of Europe, 
and no American commander refers to his 
men as swine, or designates a man in the 
ranks as “that” or “it,” as is the fashion in 
some of the Teutonic armies. The .American 
Army officer cannot be quite the autocrat. His 
tenure is reasonably secure, but he realizes 
the folly of imperiling the prosperity of the 
service by making it unpopular or obnoxious 
—that is, supposing that it were possible for 
the average American officer to be a popin¬ 
jay, a tyrant, or a cad, which he almost in¬ 
variably Isn’t. 

One proof of the increasing esteem in which 
the Army is held is found in the improvement 
in its personnel. The young fellows who of¬ 
fer for service to-day are a better sort than 
used to carry guns for Uncle Sam before. Not 
quite so good as those who enlisted when the 
w'ar broke out in Spain, but pretty good 
all the same. It would be wrong to give an 
Impression that college graduates are enlist¬ 
ing in great numbers, yet there are college 
graduates in the ranks, and they are giving a 
good account of themselves, too. The average 
recruit is of the laborer class, but he is not 
a stupid fellow. On the contrary, he must at 
least know how to read and write, and if ho 
goes into the artillery he must likewise be 
able to do a little ciphering, for he will be 
called upon in that service to read range find¬ 
ers, range tables and thermometers and ba¬ 
rometers, if nothing worse. 

A majority of those 
who enter the Army 
now are wide awake 
youngsters of an age 
when adventure appeals 
to them and when hard¬ 
ships are a sort of picnic. None of them have 
come to the season of slippers and firesides, 
and none of them enter the service as a 
refuge from debts and sin. Not only must 
the candidate pass a thorough physical exam¬ 
ination and prove certain mental qualifica¬ 
tion# as well, but he must have a few mcral/^ 


RECRUITS ARE 
WIDE AWAKE 
YOUNGSTERS. 


























'4 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER : STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


If the applicant cannot furnish letters or tes¬ 
timony of recommendation from any one in the 
neighborhood, he is cared for at the recruiting 
station while he sends home for them. Each 
recruiting office in the cities has a room with 
two or three beds where these men are kept 
till called for, and a contract is made with 
some not too conspicuous restaurant to feed 
them. These recruiting offices used to be 
peculiar to the cities alone, but an effort has 
been made recently to secure a country rep¬ 
resentation in the ranks, and it has been 
moderately successful, though for some rea¬ 
son the farmer’s boy does not stand it so well 
to stay out all night as does the son of the 
east side denizen who promenades the 
Bowery. 

The usual city recruiting office is a rented 
floor in the business district, and is in charge 


to take near a candle, often subject them¬ 
selves to the ignominy of what they call 
a “throw-down,” and sometimes the throw'- 
down extends the entire length of the stairs. 
The place has a sort of fascination for some 
of these unfortunates. They stand gazing at 
the picture of the men in pretty blue clothes 
at the entrance till they are sufficiently hyp¬ 
notized and then shamble into the office. In 
one station a certain bummer shows himself 
about once a month. He knows that it isn’t 
of the slightest use, but it has become a 
sort of devotional or patriotic duty wdth 
him. Possibly he hopes that if he goes there 
often enough the officer will ask him to | 
run out and take a drink. I 

The number of applications will vary un- | 
accountably at different seasons. Last July 
224 men presented themselves in one office 


look after himself and do things for hla 
ow'n comfort, because a direct result of army 
training is that it teaches the soldier to be 
self-dependent, and not to rely on other 
folks to do things for him. 

The abbreviated descrip- 

HERE IS A tion of the man that ~oe3 

CAHiiDI c upon the books is rather 

SAmPLE blind to the civilian, but 

DESCRIPTION.“ ‘’'.““'-'“f 

Here is a sample: Smith, 
A. B. 22 3-12 years, 5 feet % inch. Dark. 
Blue eyes 5. D brown hair. Born Brooklyn, 
N. Y. Janitor. Enlisted July 23, 1900, in 
I Brooklyn by Captain Curtis. 3 years L. s. 
I 1 / 4 , forehead, 4 p. h. ms. left cheek, left upper 
central incisor missing. Scar %a% 1. f. arm. 
L. s. I. inches 1, thumb, brown stain, % d. 



A BAND OF “JOHNNY-COME-LATELYS,” DAVID’S ISLAND. 


ef an officer who has a sergeant as his dep¬ 
uty. At the door you shall see a lithograph 
exhibiting the enlisted men of the various 
branches of the service, each one distressing¬ 
ly proper in appearance, and as slickly 
dressed as if he had stepped out of a fashion 
plate, which heaven forbid that any who live 
fn fashion plates should be allowed to do. 
The fitments are simple—just a few chairs, a 
desk or two, the iron bedsteads in the back 
loom, and here the officer receives the fiery 
warriors who want to hunt Filipinos and 
Apaches. One of the first questions is: 

“What do you w^ant to enlist for?” and if 
the answer is “ ’Cause I can’t get nothing 
else to do,” the officer replies: 

“Well, if you are useless in one line of 
w'ork you will probably be useless in an¬ 
other and you are just the sort of fellow that 
we don’t want.” 

But between you and me and the postman. 
If he passes the examination the lad gets in. 
and it may be the making of him that he 


does. 

Queer sticks you will 

QUEER STICKS find applying for work 

ADDI V TH under Uncle Sam. Old 

ArrLI lU soldiers. return for re- 

UNCLE SAM. enlistment and they 

are always welcome. 
Old soajke, TT^th I)reaths that it is dangerous 


in Brooklyn, which is not considered as a 
very good station, the residents being all 
so rich and busy that a strenuous or wan¬ 
dering life has no charm for them. Of this 
number, 49 were accepted. Yet no sooner 
was election over, and it was settled that 
Mr. Bryan would remain away from Wash¬ 
ington for four years, than the recruiting 
business fell off remarkably, and it has not 
picked up again. The presumed reason for 
this fact is that the shops and mills are run¬ 
ning cn full time and that nobody has to 
enlist unless he w’ants to. 

After the applicant has made a satisfac¬ 
tory answer to the questions of the officer, 
he is stripped, weighed, measured and a 
physician punches his ribs and listens to his 
heart beats and his breathing and overhauls 
him for the wrong kind of veins and eyes 
and ears and bones and liver and other 
works. The Bertillon system of measure¬ 
ments, which is in use in many of the 
prisons, is applied to the new arrival, and 
duplicates of the descriptions are filed 
among the archives of the War Department, 
so that it is an easier matter to catch de¬ 
serters to-day than ever it was before—if 
they are worth catching. It at least enables 
the officers to spot them when they, try to 
re-enlist, as they often do. And one of the 
first things’ that makes an officer suspicious 
of an applicant is the applicant’s ability to 


1. knee “A. B S.” in red and blue 2 Inches x 
3 inches in all. r. f. arm p. h. m. back upper 
1. arm. 2 p. h. ms. back 1. f. arm. vac. ri4x% 
1. arm. Last vaccinated July 10, 1900. Resi¬ 
dence, 4,288 Gates avenue, Brooklyn. En¬ 
listed for foot service. White infantry & 
for’d to Fort Slocum, N. Y. per instructions 
from A. G. O. April 28, 1900. Sent from Sta¬ 
tion via Rectg. station 25 & 27 Third avenue, 
N. Y. city, 11:30 A. M. July 10, 1900. Prefer¬ 
ence for Philippine service. It may. be of 
interest to learn that this system of meas¬ 
urements was not devised for the purpose 
of identifying criminals, but soldiers, and 
that its adoption in the French army was a 
measure of protection against foreign spies, 
who might otherwise enlist and make draw¬ 
ings of the forts in which they were sta¬ 
tioned. 

The interrogations that precede accept¬ 
ance relate to the man’s history, his princi¬ 
pal sins, his habits, how long he has been In 
the country and if he is a foreigner he is ad¬ 
vised to take out naturalization papers at 
once. The common causes of rejection are 
varicose veins, which persistent candidates 
will try to have cured at a hospital; narrow 
chests, which are so common that the officers 
believe there is something lacking in our 
schools in respect of oversight of pupils, and 
incompatibilities of weight and height. Th* 































THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 



into outer darkness, an aggrieved and as¬ 
tonished person. Moral: Chestiness is not 
necessary to military success. 

Once accepted, the recruit is sent oft to the 
nearest rendezvous for recruits, and there he 
must learn his trade and await a draft into 
some regiment that is short of men, for de¬ 
sertions, disease, casualties and expiration 
of the term of enlistment are constantly de- 
«)leting the Army, and a regiment is never 
long stationary in respect of membership. 
David’s Island, in Long Island Sound, is the 
principal depot near New York, and there 
are usually on hand anywhere from one 
hundred to six hundred Johnny-come-latelys 
who are awaiting the artistic touch of the 
drill sergeant. They are clothed in blue by 
the quartermaster, topped with campaign 
hats and assigned to quarters in the bar¬ 
racks. They are not worked hard at the be¬ 
ginning, though some of them think they 
are, for the setting up exercise, which is 


physical proportions to be approximated are 
these: 


Chest 


Height. 

Weight. 

measurement. 

61 inches. 

128 pounds. 

32 inches. 

65 Inches. 

130 pounds. 

32 inches. 

66 Inches. 

132 pounds. 

32% inches. 

67 Inches. 

134 pounds. 

33 Inches. 

68 inches. 

141 pounds. 

33% Inches. 

69 inches. 

148 pounds. 

33% Inches. 

70 Inches. 

155 pounds. 

34 inches. 

71 Inches. 

162 pounds. 

34% inches. 

72 inches. 

169 pounds. 

34% inches. 

73 Inches. 

176 pounds. 

35% inches. 


For infantry and 
heavy artillery the 
least height is 6 
feet 4 inches, and 
weight must be 
between 120 and 
190 pounds. For cavalry and light artillery 
the height must not be less than 5 feet 4 
inches, nor more than 5 feet 10, and weight 
must not exceed 165 pounds. Married men 


irs A SERIOUS 
MATTER 

TO TRY TO CHEAT. 


are not preferred and can be enlisted only 
on the approval of a regimental commander. 
The ages of enlistment are between 18 and 35. 
Minors will not be taken without the written 
consent of a parent or guardian, and it is 
a pretty serious matter to try to cheat the 
government. It means several weeks in the 
guard house, forfeiture of pay and dismissal. 
One youngster who tried to enlist a while 
ago under a false name, declared that he 
was an orphan, but the orphan’s father, 
knowing of his military ambitions, dropped 
in to the recruiting station and opposed 
them. The youngster, who had been out to 
get his “guardian,” presently returned with 
the proprietor of a cheap restaurant in the 
vicinity, and was ready to swear himself 
Into the service, but he didn’t. 

In appearance there are deceptions like¬ 
wise. Recently a burly fellow offered himself 
at one of the city stations ami was greeted 
with joy. He was an ideal recruit; had been 
smashing baggage or throwing ice against 
people’s doorsteps until he had a prize¬ 
fighter’s muscle and a chest like a bass 
singer. But, to quote some military slang, 
he fell down on his chest. It was more than 
a yard around, but it staid just where it 
was. He had been born with it, and it was 
nothing but bluff. It held only as much 
wind as any ordinary bookkeeper’s chest, 
for It would not Inflate. And he was cast 


devised to Induce strength and limberness 
and deep breathing, is considerable of a 
wrench to a person who has been in the 
habit of taking his exercise by sitting on 
somebody’s steps and wishing that he had a 
job. 

After he has 
learned not to 
slouch in his gait 
and attitude and to 
be prompt in obedi¬ 
ence when people 
tell him to do things and to stop saying 
“Hullo” to the officers, he is led into the 
fields and there he makes a new spectacle of 
himself In learning the facings and trying to 
keep step. At first, when ordered to face to 
the right, he is apt to turn so sharply to 


WHEN THE 

SOLDIER 

IS A SPECTACLE. 


the left that he tips over one or two men 
near him, or plants his feet against their 
corns and causes them to remonstrate. This 
brings up the sergeant or officer, who sar¬ 
castically explains on which corner of him 
he may expect to find his right hand. lYet, 
after all. It Isn’t stupidity that makes him 
bungle; It is only a habit of scaring himself 
with dread of other people’s criticisms, and 
the confusion resulting from the sharpness 
and bossy sound of the orders. He soon be- 
comee tractable, and it is not necessary in 
our time to tie the traditional bundles of 
straw and hay to the ankles of the recruits 
while they are struggling to keep step and 
bawl at them, “Hay foot, straw foot; hay 
foot, straw foot; left, left, stole ten dollars 
and left; left, right, left.” 

When he has learned not to fall over his 
own feet the “rookie” receives hia gun. He 
has been hankering to get his fingers upon It 
—hankering as vehemently as he will hank#» 
presently to take them off again, when he 
is marched with it for several miles in a 
pouring rain or a baking sun, or when he 
must go on guard all night. About then • 
gun begins to weigh some pounds. 

The day arrives when the recruit hai 
learned his business and one morning there 
comes a draft that carries hlmtoFortFreeze- 
to-Death, out in Montana; or to Porto Rico, 
or the Philippines, or Hawaii, or Guam, or 
Arizona or some or any spot that he never 
heard much about before, and after that even 
his people are apt to loee sight of him. Da¬ 
vid’s Island is a pleasant place, close to the 
popular summer resort of Glen Island. With 
a strong glass the inhabitant can look acrose 


and see the pleasurers drinking beer and eat¬ 
ing sandwiches, and he can hear the or¬ 
chestra on still evenings, when his associates 
are not deviling him. 

EATING A MOST for picnic grounds. He 

PflPIII AR canteen, 

rurUUHn where he could buy 

RECREATION. beer, unseen by the 

Women’s Christian 
Temperance Union; he has now a station of 
the Young Men’s Christian Association, which 
is in a flourishing state; he has a library of 
800 volumes, to which is attached a reading 
room that is supplied with papers and maga¬ 
zines; he has a skating pond, and he can set 
his relatives occasionally when they cross in 
the ferry to adore him in his soldier clothes. 






%V/OS 
































6 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


And he can eat, and does It. Would you 
believe that it takes not only the regular ra¬ 
tion to fill him, but that he can sweep away 
all the extrae in sight? In one month re¬ 
cently he devoured 2,200 extra rations of 
bread, to say nothing of meat and vegetables 
and the things he could buy at the canteen 
lunch counter. This fact struck me as an 
indictment against the staff service and a 
chance for some person with a nose for un¬ 
pleasant things to smell out scandals. But 
no. “Isn’t the fact that he gets all these 
extra rations proof enough that the soldier is 
getting all he wants?” queried an officer. 

“But I thought that since the Spanish war 
the ration had been improved in quantity 
and quality,” I said. 

“So it has been. All the men get enough. 
It’s only the recruits that do all this extra 
eating. They come here two months behind 
in their meals, and they are hollow, way down 
to their feet. When w'e have filled up these 
bottomless pits, the regular ration is enough 
and there is food to spare.” 

The dread of famine need never deter en¬ 
listments. Since the present commander 


glory of buttons having worn off, he goes 
about the barracks and the grounds in a 
deshabille that may alarm strangers, hence 
acts are read to him, setting forth the duty 
and advantage of keeping one’s clothes on, 
and the best proof of the wisdom in so doing 
is found in the hospital, where colds are the 
commonest of diseases under treatment, 
though the rookie sometimes takes one with 
him when he goes to soldiering that be 
doesn't say much about his family. 

Once in a great 

A CLEANER WORLD while a tramp is 

enlisted, or the 
resident of a 
Bow'ery hotel,who 
is discovered to 
be—let us say it as gently as may be—popu¬ 
lous. As his comrades put it: “He has buf¬ 
falos.” These buffalos are obnoxious creat¬ 
ures. They get into clothing and it requires 
a deal of baking and boiling to get them out. 
Pending these reformatory measures the 
patient is kept in the hospital, where he is 
harried and fumigated and shaven and shorn 
and steamed and scoured as never before in 


THAN 

IT USED TO BE. 



IN HEAVY MARCHING ORDER. 


of recruits was in charge at David’s Island 
not a single complaint has been recorded 
about the kind or quantity of the food. That 
is probably more than could be said of the 
soldiers in any other service. The dress is 
plainer than that of most warriors, but it is 
the better for that. It takes less time and 
fuss to keep it in order. It takes time and 
watchfulness on the part of the officers to 
keep it on the new men, however. They are 
a careless, headlong lot, and are accustomed 
to ways of life that permit a man to go 
about in his shirt sleeves—and a few other j 
Testments—when the day is warm or he has 


his life; for it is a cleaner world than it 
used to be, and microbes that visibly walk 
about one’s person are not tolerable in the 
Army any more than in other social circles 
of consequence. 

The recruits in the mass are a decent 
looking company—fresh faced, sober, work¬ 
aday lads of 20 to 25. Let us take the first 
handful of them and see what manner of 
men they were before they w’ere soldiers. 
Here are 8 who were laborers, 4 clerks, 3 sol¬ 
diers re-enlisted, 2 shoemakers, a spinner, 
1 a bartender, a fireman, a carriage builder, 
a machinist, a waiter, a packer, a cigar- 


maker, a silversmith, a molder, a painter, 
a miner, a farmer, a teamster, a tailor and 
a mill hand. And if they have to fight, as 
many of them want to do, the clerk will 
prove as able in the conflict as the teamster. 
There is a want of educated men to take 
situations as non-commissioned officers and 
there are worse things than being a first 
sergeant, or the electrician-sergeant of a 
battery, or a sergeant major, or a hospital 
steward, who is allowed to pass for a wise 
man, because he can wear spectacles. These 
men earn from $25 to $45 a month in the 
very first year, and if they go to the colonies 
there is a 20 per cent advance. 

Now, that is not bad, when you consider 
that in addition to his money the soldier 
gets more advantages than many men in 
the towns enjoy, who have rent to pay and 
unions to support. He has his quarters, 
which are well warmed and lighted; his 
clothes are so numerous that if he is at 
all careful he has money left from his cloth¬ 
ing allowance at the end of the year; he is 
fed by the government; if he is ill there is 
a hospital where he is treated without 
charge; and there is a company fund w'hich 
is drawn on for extras, like base ball and 
foot ball outfits, holiday fet^sts, and for din¬ 
ing room accessories somewhat better than 
the regular supply. In fact, his pay is al¬ 
most a clear gain if he chooses not to spend 
it for beer, and a hospital steward can leave 
the service at the end of three years with 
$1,600 in the bank. 

In time of peace the soldier may buy his 
discharge, if he offers a good reason for doing 
so. It will cost him $120 if he takes it when 
the law allows him to apply, at the beginning 
of his second year. After that he pays $5 
less for each succeeding month until his 
term is within six months of its close. If he 
has stood it that long he must stand it to 
the end. It is safe to say that not 1 per 
cent, of the army buy a discharge. 

If he stays his pay will go up in the fourth 
year, again in the fifth, and there will be 
other increases for each successive five years 
of service. And all this time he can be 
studying for a commission, if he is ambi¬ 
tious and industrious, with a chance of win¬ 
ning a pair of shoulder straps some day. 

One bright fellow, who went into the Army 
as a green hand a while ago, became cor¬ 
poral, sergeant, first sergeant and lieuten¬ 
ant all in ten months. Of course, that is 
remarkable, and is not likely to happen again 
in years, but till West Point is enlarged 
there will be need of more officers than the 
academy supplies and the man in the ranks 
stands a better chance of earning a commis¬ 
sion than does the civilian who used to be 
allowed to compete for it. 

But even if one does not try to advance 
himself, there is no harm done to a young¬ 
ster by three years of military service. He 
acquires not merely a good set up, but the 
habits of order, respect, promptness, neat¬ 
ness'and obedience, and the knack of look¬ 
ing out for himself will be a gain to him 
for all the rest of his days. 






























Garrisons on the Seaboard 


HERE is a material 
difference in t he 
function of a coast 
and an interior Army 
post. The troops 

who are kept about 
the forts and can¬ 
tonments in Arizona 
and New Mexico are 
a police who are lia¬ 
ble to be ordered 
away on an hour’s 
notice a fight Indi¬ 
ans or desperadoes, and may require to 
be absent for weeks and cover thou¬ 
sands of miles of territory. Not so in 

the coast fortifications. The garrison here 
is commonly of artillerymen, and, al- 
tliQugh they arc drilled a's infantry 

tneir function is to handle the big 

guns. Thousands of dollars worth of govern¬ 
ment property is in their keeping, and strang¬ 
ers are by no means cordially invited to look 
around and make themselves at home. The 
artillerymen seldom travel far, and in the 
case of foreign invasion they would become 
the most important of all our soldiers, for to 
them is intrusted the defense of the cities. 
The inland garrison protects life and some 
property, but the coast garrisons have the 
keeping of millions of lives and many mill¬ 
ions in property. 

Biggest of the forts is Monroe, which guards 
the approaches of the James and Chesapeake. 
It is well known to visitors to Old Point Com¬ 
fort, for they have it at their elbows, and 
they go there to hear the band play and see 
the drills and parades. The works cover 
twelve acres and the garrison comprises seven 
companies—about 800 men, including officers 
and band. The defensive construction is an 
interesting type of a fort that lost its im¬ 
portance when the size of artillery was in¬ 
creased. for a modern naval gun would pound 
its masonry to splinters, and the angles, so 
constructed that its garrison might easier 
fight a landing party with small arms, would 
avail nothing, for the party would not land 
till the colors had been hauled down—which, 
heaven willing, will never happen in America. 



AT FORT MONROE. 


__ The new and dan- 

MILITARY SCHOOL gerous part of 

Monroe is outside 
of the old walls, 
and comprises a row of innocent looking, 
grass grown dunes, behind which lurk 
monster cannon and ranks of mortars, and 
whoever would see these cannot do it, except 
by special favor, which is granted principally 
to Congressmen and military officers. Be¬ 
cause of its size, Monroe is often called a 


fortress, but we have no fortress in the 
United States. A fortress, as distinguished 
from a fort, incloses a town. Paris is a 
fortress. Washington was practically a fort¬ 
ress during the Civil War, Many of the Ger¬ 
man cities and some towns in Holland and 
Belgium are fortresses, because they are sur¬ 
rounded by works of imposing size and cost, 
and armed with guns to scare even the na¬ 
tives. 

The most important function of Fort Mon¬ 
roe is that pertaining to its artillery school. 
Officers of cavalry and infantry go to Fort 
Leavenworth, in Kansas, or to Fort Reilly, 
in the same state, for post .graduate instruc¬ 
tion, but officers' of artillery go to Virginia. 
While the scheme is similar to that of 
Forts Leavenworth and Reilly, the course is 
less scholastic and more practical, and less 
depends on examinations and more on aver¬ 
ages and Avork. At present there are but a 
baker’s dozen of students, but with the return 
of the troops from our colonies there will bo 


Is one of the defenses of the Narrow*, 
through which ships enter the harbor of New 
York. The reservation covers about 100 
acres, but the original fort occupies only a 
small part of this. It is a stone construction. 
Inclosing hardly more than room for a bat¬ 
talion, and most of the old casemates are 
empty, except of stores. A few of these 
casemates, or hollow, vaulted chambers in 
the masonry, are still used as guard rooms, 
however, and a few are assigned as quarters 
for married men who have thoughtlessly en¬ 
listed, or have been thoughtlessly accepted 
when they did enlist; for government prefers 
its soldiers to be wichout entanglements, 
even when the entanglements might be wel¬ 
comed for domestic service in officers’ fami¬ 
lies, or to do the washing. The objection to 
a casemate residence is that it occasionally 
has no bqck door or window; hence, in sum¬ 
mer there can be no draft of air, and it is 
common for .the burly, red faced cannon¬ 
eers, with shoebrush mustaches, to sit at 



SALLYPOPT OF THE" OLD R&POUBT 
ATFOOTM am I LTQ/\J 


an enlargement of the classes. The studies 
comprise ballistics and sea coast engineer¬ 
ing, electricity, mines and mechanism, chem¬ 
istry and explosives, post administration, 
clerical and other duties, army regulations, 
and the art and science of war. There is 
likewise a school for electrician sergeants, 
who came into being along with the big 
rifles. This gives a six months’ course for 
such soldiers as wish to qualifv for the office, 
and if they show proficiency they are recom¬ 
mended for appointment by the cr)mmandant. 

A fort with a smaller garrison, but a more 
Important function, is Fort Hamilton, which 


their doors on hot afternoons and sticky 
evenings and say to one another, “Well, I 
do declare, I think this is perfectly horrid.” 


VISITORS NOT 
WELCOME IN A FORT. 


i^ort Hamil¬ 
ton Is des¬ 
tined to lose 
much of its 
ancient appearance. Fort Monroe is equally 
obsolete, and if it had not cost so much and 
was not so interesting as a relic and had not 
become such a show place, and would not be 
so expensive to destroy, it would be taken 
apart and given to the poor. But Hamilton 


























8 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 



iTHEOLD QEDOUBT 
ATFOPTHAMlim 


p ipi iiW! 


r or^ MOPERN 
6uN /N aSE: 

ONTTAE 

^iEA&OARP. 




is already transferred out of itself, and the 
places where the big guns hide are earth¬ 
works, with cement linings that extend along 
the bay front. No outsiders are allowed to 
visit these guns; not even the soldiers of the 
garrison may go to them, except when they 
have work to do. One may not photograph 
nor describe nor even look too closely at 
them, lest he should be tempted to turn away 
and inform a foreign government where they 
are, and how strong and how many. All the 
same, every foreign government has a plan 
of Fort Hamilton in its archives, just as we 
have the-plans of a lot of places abroad in 


TARGET PRACTICE Gunnery is a vex¬ 
atious trade in 

NOT ALWAYS A JOY busy waters, and 

you never could 
guess how many fishing boats there are in 
the neighborhood until you train a big rifle 
across the track where they travel. Every¬ 
thing is ready, the piece is loaded and sight¬ 
ed, when along comes a picayune smack with 
a couple of men and a couple of dollars’ 
worth of dead fish in it, and the fire must 
be held. They are not safely past the 
danger line before another smack comes 
beating up against the wind, and directly 


stonework is out of date and defensive an¬ 
gles count for nothing against ships. In¬ 
deed, another revolution is in sight. It 
emerges with the Gruson turrets, which are. 
low', rakish, round-roofed constructions, sug¬ 
gesting small gasometers or the turrets of 
monitors, painted so as to resemble the sur¬ 
rounding soil and nearly covered with grass, 
huddling close to the earth, but containing 
a couple of powerful guns. The arched roof 
causes projectiles thrown against it to 
glance off, and the guns may be trained on 
any point in a wide circle. Such turrets can 
be built on artificial bars and islands in our 
harbors, they can be planted on beaches and 
among the rocks of bolder shores, they can 
be almost wholly concealed amid the shrub¬ 
bery of bluffs, and they can be worked by a 
few men. So, although Fort Hamilton is 
modern, it may to-morrow be as out of date 
as Ticonderoga. 

Most of the government reservation at 
Hamilton is given to grass. The horses use 
this to their advantage. Also, one cow, that is 
attached to the hospital. Every company has 
a garden, and there is a little ‘‘gentleman 
farming,” but, like most of this kind of farm¬ 
ing, it does not pay very well. Instead of 
raising cocoanuts, and bananas, and things 
it is not easy to get, the men raise potatoes, 
onions and such like, and instead of asking 
the agricultural department to give the seed 
for these vegetables, as it does to strangers 
in the backwoods, they recklessly buy it 
However, the little farms ■ afford occupation. 


which we have no present interest, and in 
which we never had any business. 

Gun practice comes but once or twice a year 
and is a great occasion. The firing of a ten 
inch rifle deserves especial ceremonies,but the 
principal ceremony is to scuttle away from 
it. It is a great tube 32 feet long, carrying a 
lump of iron to sea that weighs 575 pounds, 
and is driven into space by 280 pounds of 
powder. The men gather about the piece. 
It Is loaded and sighted. Away out on the 
shining water, three miles, perhaps, you can 
just see a speck that is being slowly drawn to 
and fro by a tug. That speck is the target. 
You are filled with amazement to think they 
should try to hit so tiny an object with so 
big a shell. All is ready. Those who have 
no pressing business in the vicinity retire. 
Those who have open their mouths and rise 
on their toes to ease the shock of the ex¬ 
plosion, for. do as they will, their ears will 
ring for hours after. A dazzling flash, a 
crashing roai-, and—listen! the roar con¬ 
tinues, like thunder moving out to sea. 
It is the shell. In two or three sec¬ 
onds there is a mighty burst of water a cou¬ 
ple of miles away. Another second and a 
second fountain plays, a mile beyond it. 
There may be another ricochet and a third 
fountain before the iron falls into the ocean 
and goes down to alarm the sharks. 

Meanwhile, the gun, which has a recoil 
that would stave in the side of a house, if it 
were unchecked, sinks quietly on its disap¬ 
pearing carriage and a huge cloud of smoke 
drifts off. For they cannot afford smoke¬ 
less powder for target practice. That is re¬ 
served for battle, so that the enemy shall 
not see where the shois are coming from. 
A corporal takes his pipe from his mouth— 
he is off duty—and remarks, ‘‘Gee! If I had 
the money it costs to shoot at them targets 
to-day, wouid I quit the Army to—morrow? 
Well. I guess yes.” 


behind it a third. And so the procession 
passes for possibly an hour. Meantime the 
officers are kicking their heels against the 
masonry and wishing that martial law were 
extended to cover a few miles of the sea, 
in order to bring these troublers in or keep 
them out. 

The old fort had walls of masonry, and 
these walls jut at various angles, the idea 
of the recesses and projections being to ex¬ 
pose to rifle or howitzer fire an invading 
force that might reach the ditch, as every 
face of the outer wall is covered by an 
angle, so that the ditch can be swept in 
every direction. To reach the moat in the 
first place the enemy, after landing, must 
advance over the sloped plain, called the 
glacis, which is kept bare of everything but 
grass, in order to afford no shelter. But 


and if It were not for planting, hoeing, water¬ 
ing and shooting potato bugs the men who till 
the soil might be leaning over some silk 
counter in the neighborhood and talking poli¬ 
tics. 

^ The situation it 

DELIGHTFUL PLACE delightful. It is 
FOR A GARRISON. 

lyn. The ocean laves its outer edge, and the 
Narrows on the western side separate it from 
the picturesque heights of Staten Island, also 
crowned by forts. The ancient stone castle 
of Fort Lafayette stands a few rods off 
shore, not merely useless but in the way, yet 
an example of fortification which was respect¬ 
ed during the Civil War. It is circular and 
contains ranks of casemates, each containing 
places for guns, and a few- old smooth boreg 




























9 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


and mortars, with “bums” and carriages rust 
about the premises. These relics are taken 
away every now and again to be broken up for 
old iron, and the hearts of relic hunters break 
when they think of it. Lafayette, a fort of 
the Sumter type, was a federal prison forty 
years ago. Eastward appear across a reach 
of water the towers and roofs and wheels of 
Coney Island, which almost any soldier may 
visit in the evening. If he will be good, for 
there is much liberty at this place. Indeed, 
the enlisted man who has no specific duty is 
practically free from 1 or .2 o’clock in the 
afternoon till 6 o’clock next; morning, pro¬ 
vided always that he has sho\ifn himself to be 
trustworthy and does not overstay his leave, i 
This freedom makes the men better content- ^ 
ed. They have all the advantage of a city resi- I 
deuce without high rents and quarrels with ] 
Janitors. ^It gives to them the chance to dine 
at the swell restaurants'-and go to theHers 
and receptions and dances and call on friends 
who introduce themselves in the Bowery. 
Formerly the skirts of the fort were crowded 
with cheap saloons and dance halls, but a 
lucky fire removed some of them and the 
keppers of others retired in disgust after the 
canteen was established. Now that the can¬ 
teen has been removed the saloons are com¬ 
ing back The men are a well behaved lot, 
however, for the near presence of temptations 
and opportunities removes the incentive to go 
wrong. The surest way to make a man do a 
thing is to surround it with difficulties and 
remove it to a distance. The City of New 
York being just outside the fort, its vagaries 
astonish and attract the men less than if they 
had recently come up from New Mexico. 

Because there are schools and libraries and 
churches outside, there is less to be done,for 
the promotion of mental and moral industry 
than would be the case in an isolated post. 
The children of the officers attend the public 
schools of Brooklyn, which “are sure to be 
better than any private school in a fort,.and 
some of the soldiers attend the night schools 
of the city. If the men wish'to attend divine 
service they may take their choice of almost 
any sect,, for there are churches, and chap¬ 
els of every denomination within easy reach. 
How many, of these husky youths go to 
church three times' on Sunday deponent say- 
eth not., The^ public library of Brooklyn has 
a branch near the' fort,‘so that soldiers can 
take books,.and there is a library on the post, 
which has papers and magazines; but its oOO 
volumes were donations and consist to a con¬ 
siderable extent, therefore, of congressional 
records, reports of boards of survey, of tract 
societies, of legislatures and of patent office 
doings. 


GO TO SCHOOL 


There is one school 

WHERE SOLDIERS on the grounds, but 

it is for the enlist¬ 
ed men. It is taught 
by one of the soldiers detailed for that pur¬ 
pose. There are fifty scholars, who attend 
without urging, but if a recruit is uncommon 
dumb he can be sent to that school by his of¬ 
ficers, made to begin his a-b abs and also to 
learn to figure out the sum of two and two. 
The strain on his mind is not usually great, 
because he has a physique that enables him 
to endure a good deal of effort. There is also 
an advanced school for more earnest students, 
and it has ten pupils. For morally instruct¬ 
ive purposes the Young Men’s Christian As¬ 
sociation has established a branch, and the 
meetings are fairly attended. On certain af¬ 
ternoons there is song service and the sound 
of hymns in feminine voices makes Johnny- 
come-lately think of home, if he had one. 

It also makes him think of home if he is 
put into the guard house—it is so different 


It is one of the casemates of the old fort, and 
is bare and dismal and has iron bars that in¬ 
terfere with a free circulation. But he mere¬ 
ly sleeps there. Prisoners earn their keep by 
working at the most ornery jobs to be had 
about the post. Eiach batch of offenders goes 
to his task with a guard at its heels, and the 
guard has a loaded rifle and orders to shoot 
if the prisoner runs, but the prisoner is some¬ 
times too well satisfied to run. The other 
day I was chatting with some of the villains 
who had broken the laws, and who were dis¬ 
tributed over a parade ground, lazily plucking 


cant, and the coast artillery has about three 
weeks of actual firing practice in the summer. 
The big guns are of 4 7-10, 10 and 12 inch 
bore, and there are 12 inch mortars. 


DAYS OF “STRIKERS" o Ta'^ 
ARE NO MORE. 

self and his gun, and who has worn his 
blue clothes long enough not to consider 
himself a spectacle, is glad to be sent to 
Fort Hamilton. It offers advantages that he 



officer’s row at fori HAMILTON. 


weeds. Pointing to one of the weeds I asked 
a prisoner what it was. He rolled over on 
his back, kicked gleefully at heaven and re¬ 
plied: “I dunno, but I think it’s a cinch me- 
self.” 

iThe usual living places at Fort Hamilton 
are well constructed barracks, one for each 
company, with separate quarters for married 
men, and the officers have pretty cottages 
with shade and gardens fronting one of the 
Brooklyn streets. Since the fort was found¬ 
ed, in 1825, the government has added forty 
acres to the original sixty, but it has now in 
contemplation a really fine scheme which will 
include not only the enlargement but the 
beautifying of the premises, and the ar¬ 
rangement of officers’ quarters in a semi-cir¬ 
cular group, about a park. The garrison con¬ 
sists of a battery of field artillery and five 
companies of coast artillery: an effective of 
510, Including fourteen officers, of whom only 
eight are on duty at the place at this writ¬ 
ing. Two of the coast artillery companies 
are temporarily at Fort Columbus, another 
station in New York Harbor, familiar to 
steamboat passengers because of its utter 
uselessness, except as a recruit station and 
a prison, and conspicuous because of old 
Castle William, the granite cheese box at 
one corner. 

Under the recent changes in army organ¬ 
ization several forts pass under command 
of one officer, provided they are near one an¬ 
other, The old regimental organization has 
been discontinued, and the artillery consists 
of thirty batteries- of field artillery, with 165 
men in each, and 126 companies of coast ar¬ 
tillery with 109 men In each. Artillery col¬ 
onels are now in command of districts, which 
may include four or five works of the first 
Importance; lieutenant colonels and majors 
are in command of forts, while companies 
and batteries are in command ^ of captains 
and lieutenants. The field artillery drills 
every day with dangerous looking rifles of a 
size to make the old field pieces insUtnlfi.- 


dces not have In busier places. Accidents 
are impossible on the firing line, because 
there isn’t any firing line; and he seldom has 
an opportunity to break into jail. If he has 
a little knack at other things than soldier¬ 
ing, his lot is all the easier, or at least more 
remunerative, for government offers an ex¬ 
tra stipend to soldiers who can make them¬ 
selves useful about a military station in 
other than military ways. There was a time 
when the private was employed by his colonel 
or his captain as a “striker,” that being the 
name for a man who never struck, and was 
detailed for domestic service. He peeled the 
potatoes and trundled the baby out for an 
airing, and he went to town on errands, and 
he polished up the door knobs; but it was 
thought Ihs^t this kind of work was deroga¬ 
tory to his dignity as a servant of the United 
States, and now the officer hires his help 
from outside, when he can, though, gener¬ 
ally, he can’t. Of course, many of the sol¬ 
diers were glad to serve as strikers, inas¬ 
much as they were excused from certain 
drills and duties, and the officers paid them 
extra into the bargain. 

While there are no more strikers, certain 
officers are entitled to the services of order¬ 
lies, who are messengers rather than ser¬ 
vants, but must take care of the officers’ 
horses. As this position requires intelli¬ 
gence and neatness, and carries with It cer¬ 
tain concessions, it is not refused when 
offered; at least, not often. Strikers some¬ 
times earned as much as $40 a month, with 
their government and private pay, but the 
enlisted man who is a clerk or mechanic 
does not often have the chance to earn 
more than $30. Government allowances 
are large enough to pay mechanics in 
the ranks 50 cents extra a day and team¬ 
sters picked from the ranks have an extra 
of 35 cents a day. The mechanics include 
masons, plumbers, carpenters, machinists, 
printers and typewriters. Then there are 
skilled laborers, such as stable cleaners, gat* 





































THE A^tlERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


10 







"Types OP EAPRAC^ 
AT PORT hAMILTON 




W HOi PITAU 
DU1LP1NG5 

AT 

rOPT 

HAMILTON. 


^r-4ri 


deners and so on, who have no more than 
their $13 a month, but are released from 
most drills. Every company furnishes four 
men for extra duty, and there are in Fort 
Hamilton twelve men detailed on what is 
called special duty. These are the clerks, 
head gardeners, boss of the wash house, li¬ 
brarian, school teacher and men who have 
the care of the guns. 

It is a trifle saddening to hear that there 
are men who cannot be trusted in the com¬ 
pany of a large gun without trying to elope 
with it, or parts of it. Said one of the non¬ 
commissioned officers: “We’ve got a few men 
here that would run off with a red hot 
stove." And this la one of the reasons why 
the guns and the stoves are watched. 

__ . Let it not be sup- 

OPPORTUNITIES posed that the men 

who run away with 
stoves are any con¬ 
siderable or esteemed portion of the United 
States Army. Quite the contrary. The worst 
that is told of the average soldier is that 
he wants beer, and, not being able to get 
it on the post, he goes outside, where they 
sell whisky. There are, withal, several en¬ 
listed men—and officers, too—who drink 
nothing but coffee and tea and water, and 
the relations between the men in the ranks 
and the wearers of- shoulder straps are made 
pleasanter through the employment of bright, 
clean-minded young fellows as intermedi¬ 
aries or non-commissioned officers. There is 
a field in the Army for young men of just 
that sort. If a fellow is sober and steady 
and obedient and industrious and cheerful, 
he can hardly avoid being made corporal. 


as corporal. Indeed, I met the other day 
a lad who was to be a second lieutenant on 
the next morning, and he was attired in his 
overalls, cleaning out a stable. He had 
never worn chevrons, and would step straight 
from the ranks to the command of a platoon. 

Until a man receives his shoulder straps 
the gap between him and the officer is too 
wide to bridge; at least, the officer says so, 
and he believes it. The men take this so¬ 
cial discrepancy in a complacent humor and 
speak as w'ell of their officers as the officers 
speak of them. There is obvious good feel¬ 
ing on each side. The professional advan- 
i tago of a bar between the officer and the 
private is that it enables the former to en¬ 
force his order, and to the regular .\rmy 
man there are no relationships, no friend- 


these days, and then he can flourish among 
the general’s bric-a-brac with spurs on. It 
is a hard law or custom that separates a son 
from his parents, when that son is not only 
guilty of no offense, but has sacrificed imme¬ 
diate advantage to serve his country; but 
there is another side to the matter. Among 
our volunteers, excellent material as they 
are, the old equality that existed before en¬ 
listment continues, in a measure. When 
one of the New England regiments was mus¬ 
tered out, at the close of the Spanish war, 
it was almost in a state of demoralization. 
Several of the officers were troubled with 
brothers and cousins and other relatives, who 
placidly followed them into their quarters 
whenever they heard that there was to be a 


FOH BRIGHT MEN. 


drink, and In one or two cases men in com¬ 
mand of companies had their employers in 
the ranks. Would (hey dare to tell the men 
who bossed them in civil life to step lively, 
so soon as they were in uniform? Some of 
the men could never understand the need of 
discipline, or the social distinctions that se¬ 
cure it, and when they were punished for 
an offense they would go to the guard house 
swearing vengeance against their command¬ 
ers. Some of them tried to take it after¬ 
ward, too. 

In order to prevent this sort of thing one 
of the officers at Fort Hamilton has fathered 
a bill, that may yet appear in Congress, if it 
needs to go there, requiring that volunteer 
regiments shall be officered by men from 
another state than the one in which the reg¬ 
iment is raised. With a force that he is not 
afraid of, a colonel can do about ns he 
pleases. The best officer Is the regular, but 
there are not always regulars enough, so 
that the war department must do as it can, 
in an emergency. 

But in Fort Hamilton, at least, every op¬ 
portunity is given to the soldier who is am¬ 
bitious and who is trying to better his con¬ 
dition. Social disparity between him and his 
superiors disappears after he receives his 
commission, and any office is open to him 
from that moment. This is not the case in 
some otfier countries, and even in England 
the man who rises from the ranks is eligible 
only to certain offices. In one of the coast 
garrisons recently a private received a com¬ 
mission, and his colonel, on the very next 
morning, took him out driving with his 
daughter. It is not always so hard to be a 
soldier. 


hen sergeant, then first sergeant, then ser- 
;eant major, and if he wants to study for 
. commission his officers will help him. 

Two or three men in Fort Hamilton have 
ecently risen out of the ranks and donned 
houlder straps, and they speak in terms al- 
aost of enthusiasm of the officers who helped 
hem—coached them In their studies, In- 
tructed them in practical tactics and sup- 
)lied them with time and books and facill- 
ies for advancement. This is not invari- 
.ble, for much depends on the officer. The 
ommander of one post believes that if a 
oldier rises out of the ranks he should prove 
ils worth by unaided effort, and if he learns 
hat such a man is studying for a commis- 
lion he will not promote him to be so much 


ships that can dissuade him from his duty. 
One general in our Army has a son in the 
ranks. When that boy wants to see his 
mother, does the general allow him to go 
into the parlor, w’here he would be seen by 
the other guests? No. He does not see him 
at all, and compels his wife to go Into the 
kitchen that she may talk with the young¬ 
ster there. And the youngster will be ad¬ 
mitted only at the back door. 

lllinn m ^his is ap BX- 

HARD CUSTOMS treme case and 

the general is 
no doubt secret¬ 
ly proud of his son for his spunk in enlist¬ 
ing when he could not get in at West Point. 
The boy will earn his commission one of 


HAVE ADVANTAGES. 


























































Frontier Posts 


HE term fort com¬ 
monly means a 
place of strength. 
In the West it 
has recently be¬ 
come no more 
than a place of 
military assem¬ 
blage. With the 
retirement of our 
frontier, across 
several degrees of 
longitude west 
from Washington, 
it has ceased to mean even that, for many 
Army stations, which in the days of savage 
wars and breaks of outlawry were important 
posts, sometimes really forts, are now in 
ruin, the parade ground gone to weed and 
sage brush, the quarters crumbling with dry 
rot, the flagstaff down, stables and fences car¬ 
ried away piecemeal to make fires for tramps 
and prospectors, and silence brooding on the 
place where, but a few years ago were bustle 
and clamor, the roar of the morning and even¬ 
ing gun and the thrill of martial music. 

Our Army of 25,000 men sufflced for a home 
guard, and to the time of our break with 
Spain the frontier posts were strongly 
manned, even where no garrison was required. 
Indeed, it was necessary to place many of the 
regiments at remote stations on the plains 
and in the mountains, if only for the reason 
that there was no room for them elsewhere. 
Luckily the occasion for such forts had prac¬ 
tically disappeared when the need for our 
Army for service abroad had arisen. Regi¬ 
ments have been withdrawn, then companies 
and even squads, and to-day we And such de¬ 
fenses as the old fort at St. Augustine garri¬ 
soned by one sergeant. The probability is 
that within a few years the interior forts of 
the country will be mere names. The Na¬ 
tional Guard suffices for local defense; the 
Indians are pacified and are going to school; 
the Mormons have never been so dangerous 
to the moral or political integrity of the coun¬ 
try as to require the federal authorities to 
keep the guns of Port Douglas trained on 
their capital; a sheriff’s posse of indignant 
citizens is usually to be counted on in ease 
of assault on the malls, ft is only at the sea 
gates and along the border that military sta¬ 
tions will be maintained, and those at the 
border will be distributing points, rather than 
defenses, for the troops of either country ^'ill 
have free range into that of the enemy if 
•ver we engage with Canada or Mexico. 



HERE’S A SAMPLE A type of the fron- 

tier post is Fort 

FRONTIER POST. Huachuca, Arizona. 

It \yas built in 
1878, at a time when the settlers in that re¬ 
gion were almost at the mercy of renegade 
Indians. Of these the Apaches were worst, 
and but for the caging of old Geronimo they 
would vex us still. Huachuca bad a double 
advantage and importance as a base of opera¬ 
tions against the Apaches and as a defense 
against the Mexicans, had any cause of war 
arisen between their country and our own. 
It stands at the entrance to passes leading 
through the Huachuca Mountains, into the 
neighbor country. Arraiea used the passes, 
but the Indians used the mountains, and in 
their almost unexplored fastnesses they found 
shelter for months, and almost for years. 

The fort is thirty-seven miles from the 
main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, 
and stands just at the edge of the dreary yet 
impressive desert. A horse, or a mule team, 
takes you over one of the roughest of roads 
to what, by contrast with the desolation of 
the sands—desolate in spite of the cactus, 
the mesquite and the Spanish dagger—seems 
on your arrival to be a spot of singular beau¬ 
ty. Just where the steep hills shoot Irom the 
plain is an oblong parade ground with a flag¬ 
staff before the house of the commandant. 
This field is bordered on one side by wooden 
barracks; on the opposite side by the officers’ 
quarters, prettily environed in flowers and 
shrubbery; at the lower end by the 
hospital and cottages of certain non¬ 
commissioned officers, and at the upper 
end by the library, canteen, post of¬ 
fice and quarters for the few civilians em¬ 
ployed about the place. Behind the barracks 
are work shops, store houses, a magazine, a 
bath house, a corral, stables, a laundry and 
a restaurant. On a height overlooking the 
post is a construction which has some sem¬ 
blance to a fort, but it proves, on approach, 
to be k reservoir, Fort there is none; not a 
foot of earthwork or intrenebment or stock¬ 
ade; nothing more than a wall of adobe about 
the powder house. 


DILAPIDATED. 


The buildings are slm- 

BUILDINGS ARE pie in construction, 

mostly of wood, with 
some additions of sun- 
dried clay, and Congress has apparently 
overlooked them, for many are in a melan¬ 
choly state, with fallen plaster, missing win¬ 
dow panes, discolored paint, splintered wood¬ 
work and uneven floors. No coal is pro¬ 


vided, but, luckily, there is a considerftU# 
growth of trees In the canyon behind the 
fort, bordering a creek that is a creek for a 
few hours after rain, and these trees afford all 
the wood that is needed for beating and 
cooking. And on a wild night, when a winter 
gale is roaring down the pass, when the for¬ 
ests are bowing their heads and lifting their 
voices, the lights seen through the uncur¬ 
tained windows of the quarters denote open 
hearths with cozy fires, and where hearths 
are open and the flame shows forth, there 
hearts are open, too. It is so at Huachuca. 
Separated as it is from the world, the 
stranger is welcomed, for he comes bring¬ 
ing news and company. He will fare no bet¬ 
ter than a soldier, will sleep in barracks and 
dine on stew and coffee, but these fine, gen¬ 
erous fellows who have engaged to fight for 
Uncle Sam, when that relative needs their 
services, will do what they can to make bin 
feel at home. 

Of late Huachuca, like other Western posts, 
has fallen off from its ancient consequence. 
It is planned for two companies of infan¬ 
try and two cavalry troops, and to these a 
battery of artillery could be added; but at 
the time of my visit the garrison had shrunk 
to a single troop of cavalry, and that was 
expecting to be sent to the Philippines in 
a few weeks. When the garrison is so small 
there is less of routine work than in larger 
stations, for the men must be employed In 
those extra military duties which are known 
as fatigue, probably because they are so fa¬ 
tiguing. They must haul supplies, cut wood, 
make and mend roads, repair buildings and 
keep the grounds in order; they must servo 
as couriers to carry dispatches to settlements 
and telegraph offices; they must convoy treas¬ 
ure trains; they must act as police when 
disturbances occur or threaten; they must 
play farmer in the post garden, and must 
hunt for fresh meat In the mountains. One 
does not go for military spectacles to a fron¬ 
tier post. Not one soldier in Fort Huachuca 
has a full dress uniform. 


EACH STATION .nd ;;;; ™.: 

A LITTLE WORLD. !» “«»■ 

when its force is 
thinned to a skeleton its greatest lacks are 
social. Three or four years ago every post 
was a little world. Something was always 
going on. The troops were put through 
their paces every day, the evening dress 
parade was an event; there were band con¬ 
certs on the green, polo and base ball and 









12 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


foot ball filled some spare hours, the library 
and reading room were constantly patronized, 
there was much visiting among ofiicers’ fam¬ 
ilies and, as will happen where there is visit¬ 
ing, gossip was exchanged of less or greater 
Interest. Then the tedium of the winter 
nights was relieved by dances, assemblies, 
games and theatricals. Huachuca has a lit¬ 
tle stage, with curtain and scenery, in its 
reading room, but it is dusty and dilapidated, 
and the organ and piano are out of tune and 
harsh. There is no band—merely the buglers 
—and for diversion one goes to the corral 
and notices the mules. 

A frontier post differs incidentally from one 
near the cities in the employments of its 
garrison, but it differs in size and geography, 
too. It occupies a large tract because there 
must be ample forage ground for horses: 
because it must have its own farms and 
gardens; because the disreputable resorts 
that spring up about a military station as 
soon as the canteen disappears must be kept 
at as wide a distance as possible; it is easy 
to take land enough, for usually govern¬ 
ment has relinquished no claims upon the 
neighborhood, and in the desert region a 
settler would say he had been swindled if 
he had paid more than 50 cents an acre; 
hence government has no rivals and ob¬ 
jectors. 

Port Huachuca covers no less than sixty 
square miles. The line of ownership extends 
to the top of the Huachuca range, and this 
insures a wood and water supply, all the 
drainage of the nearer hills being capable of 
deflection to the fort, and the live oak, syca- 


the dietary, but with no receipts the extras 
and delicacies disappear. If the Woman’s 
Christian Temperance Union wishes to come 
into the partial good will of the soldiers it 
may do so by providing them with the canned 
foods, cake, cheese, preserves and such like 
boons that Congress legislated off from the 
tables of the enlisted men when it abolished 
the canteen. The women and the liquor 
dealers who have deprived the Army of its 
beer are not in the esteem of that Army at 
present, and if they wished to take up a col¬ 
lection for any moral or immoral purpose 
they would find the usually generous soldier 
a timid and unwilling giver. Some troops 
and companies fared so well in the past that 
they had special china for their dining rooms, 
figured w'ith the regimental number and com¬ 
pany letter, plated knives and forks, and even 
table linen. They were able to put on so 
many airs that they almost fell into disre¬ 
pute, as dudes. 

It has been said that soldiers cease to no¬ 
tice scenery after they have been in service 
for two or three years. This may be true of 
the foreign armies, but it does not hold of the 
American troops. Their admiration for the 
sweeps of vast and windy desert, for the 
snowy peaks, for the wild canyons, for the 
tumbling rivers, for the heavens gemmed with 
clouds of stars unseen in ^town, may be tran¬ 
quil and not often expressed, but it is there, 
and it grow's instead of lessens. One trooper, 
returning from a furlough, declared: 

“I can never be content again In a city. 
I’ve got to be In some place where I can look 



BARFiACl-Lr 
Fort Huachuca 


OF/FICERS’ QUARTERS t f C 

• -- TORX HUACHUCA. 


more, cottonw'ood and mesquite furnishing 
building material as weii as fuel. The post 
garden is eight miles from the barracks and 
comprises a tract of five acres, on which 
are raised the commoner vegetables and 
some fruit, including peaches. 

When a post 

HOW THE W. C. T. U. garden is in 

good yield it 
supplies so 
much food that the army ration, always more 
than sufficient, except for recruits and In¬ 
dians, is sold, in part, to tradesmen and 
ranchers, and the money so realized goes into 
the post fund. The canteen receipts were also 
applied to the bettering and diversifying of 


MIGHT SCORE ONE. 


off for twenty-five miles.” This pacifying ef¬ 
fect of great surroundings probably has its 
part in the order and content of the frontier 
garrisons, and desertions are few, though 
the runaways may be a trifle more numerous 
than from the larger posts. Life is dull at 
times, and again exciting, and to pace one’s 
beat, far out at the edge of the guard line, is 
trying on nights when storms are brewing 
among the hills or when rumors of an Indian 
rising have Just come Into camp. In the 
loneliness of those hours the soldier's imag¬ 
ination plays pranks, and he often blazes 
away at rocks and sage, because in his ex¬ 
cited vision they are skulking savages or 
Mexican renegades. 


DESERTERS Yet it often happens 

that a deserter will 

OFTEN RETURN. change his mind after 

running away and will 
go back and give himself up. He knows that 
punishment Is less severe and better adjusted 
to the offense than it used to be and, after a 
little experience ae a hobo, he is anxious to 
get back to quarters among the rough, swear¬ 
ing, rollicking, devil-may-care, big-hearted 
fellows at the barracks, the small but certain 
pay, the regular meals, the warm clothing, 
the comfortable cot and the convenient hos¬ 
pital. These deserters are not always con¬ 
demned, even by their officers, for the reason 
that some of them appear to be unbalanced. 

In the annals of our Army, we find rec¬ 
ord© of no finer, braver work than has been 
done by these frontier commands. To know 
what that work implies, one need© to see the 
country—the ranges lifting their precipitous 
peaks Into the zone of eternal snow, the tre¬ 
mendous deserts, void of fuel, forage and 
water, the unpathed miles of cactus and mes¬ 
quite, where the only living creaturee to be 
seen are poisonous insects and dangerous 
serpents, the beds of ancient seas below the 
present ocean level, where killing heats are 
endured by day and chills come on at night. 
Through these wild© our boys have followed 
the Indians for weeks, months, year©, and 
have conquered them at last; conquered, in 
spite of the red men’s superior numbers and 
knowledge of the country; conquered. In spite 
of hunger when supplies must needs be for¬ 
warded for hundreds of miles and-In spite of 
the delays incident to the use of wagon 
trains and artillery. Bloody battles have 
been waged among these desolations—battles 
that would have been needless if the white 
man had kept faith with the red man or If 
government had long ago done the proper and 
obvious thing and had turned over to the 
Army the management of the Indians. 

And there are bad white men, who must 
be hunted into their lairs—train robbers and 
outlaw©—as well as scalawags and rebels 
from over the border. We have had a 
friendly understanding with Mexico that per¬ 
mitted our troops to cross the line “when in 
hot pursuit” of offenders, and Fort Huachuca 
is an Important station, because it guard© 
two or three lines of communication Into 
that country. 'This understanding has been 
modified, but a cavalry officer dryly remarked 
that, if he were chasing Indian© southward, 
he didn’t think he should hunt around for 
boundary monuments to see when to stop. 
Mexico is only fifteen miles away and the 
authorities next door recently telegraphed to 
our troops to arrest the Yaquis when they 
were raiding northward at Nogales; but, al¬ 
though our men were ready for them, the 
Indians did not cros© into American territory. 

In order to 

PRACTICE MARCHES keep the sol- 
HARD BUT WELCOME.“ 

this kind of work, they have long practice 
marches at least once a year, and, severe 
as this experience is, they like it. They are 
an uneasy lot and need change. 'When a 
march is undertaken the fort is practically 
emptied of its men, a mere handful being 
left to guard the place against fire and pil¬ 
fering. The troops are gone not less than 
twelve days, and may be away considerably 
longer. For cavalry the day’s march ranges 
from eighteen to thirty-eight miles a day, 
twenty-five miles being an average, but a 
few forced marches are always ordered, to 
test the mettle of the troops. 

These ventures into the desert are excel- 




































THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


13 


lent things for discipline, morale and the 
development of resource. The men come 
back as hard as nails, in every way more 
efficient than when they started, and they 
must push on through sand storms, snow 
storms, rain storms and under blistering 
suns. Dog tents are pitched every night, but 
merely for practice, as in mild weather the 
men are not required to sleep in them, and 
there is much hunting, the dietary being en¬ 
larged by the addition of bear meat and 
venison. Mess kits and Buzzacott ovens are 
carried and every soldier is obliged to cook 
for himself, while incidentally he learns a 
good deal about packing, wagon driving and 
the dynamic possibilities of mules. The of¬ 
ficers engage In heliograph practice, make 
surveys and must draw a map of the whole 
route of march, marking all buttes, can¬ 
yons, streams, springs, woods, shacks and 
trails. 

These desert experiences can be far from 


WHEN INDIANS These Indians are good 

people to “stand in 

ARE USEFUL with,” therefore, on 

practice marches and 

active campaigns. There is good politics, 

too, in allying them with the Army, instead 
of against it. This is one of the pet schemes 
of General Miles, and at one time we had 
no less than a thousand Indians under arms. 
When they were fighting for the white men 
they were out of one kind of mischief and 
their loyalty and pertinacity would astonish 
those glib detractors who declare that the 
only good Indian is a dead Indian. There are 
a dozen or fifteen Apaches at Fort Huachuca 
who are enlisted as scouts. Now, remember¬ 
ing that Apaches are the most poisonous of 
Indians; considering, likewise, the fact that 
these men are never sober when they can 
be otherwise, their reliability is wonderful. 
They are like a company of hobble-de-hoys 
of 16 or 18 years, are almost always good 


signs the white man does not see, but to the 
Indian they are as the printed page. Their 
lives have been given largely to the study 
of animals from the economic and gastrono¬ 
mic, not the scientific viewpoint—and their 
wood lore is not theory. It is fact and prac¬ 
tice. 


APACHES HAVE 
GOOD APPETITES. 


At Port Huachuca 
these scouts oc¬ 
cupy a barrack by 
themselves. It is 


dirty and disorderly as compared with the 
white men’s quarters and their cooking is 
poor. They are tremendous eaters. It is 
no unusual thing with them to consume and 
waste ten days’ rations in three days. Only 
boa constrictors are to be compared with 
them in power of assimilation. An Army 
officer who has had a long experience among 
them says that an Apache has been known to 
eat twenty-five pounds of food in twenty-four 
hours, and that he got his squaw to grease 



amusing. Soldiers have gone mad with heat 
and thirst and with the terrible loneliness 
that assails men used to a congregate life, 
when, by accident, they are separated from 
their fellows. 

When Major Cooper’s command was within 
ten days* march of Fort Grant it missed one 
of the water holes, and for three days 
tramped along the burning sands without 
other drink than the blood of its horses. 
When rescued by a relief party the men 
were all horseless and were crawling on 
hands and knees and nearly all were crazy. 
All recovered after a few days of rest and 
good nursing. This kind of thing never hap¬ 
pens to the Indians, who know every stream 
and water hole for hundreds of miles around, 
nor does it often happen to the hunting par¬ 
ties that go out during the winter, for they 
jcemmonly seek the hills. 


natured, doing no injury except in passion, 
and, being free from the trammels of an 
eastern conscience, may be relied upon to do 
just what they are told to do. A reward 
of $10 was offered for a chief who had been 
especially troublesome. One day the son of 
this chief trudged into the commandant’s 
office, with a gunny sack under his arm. He 
opened it, and there was the head of the 
chief. The scout had killed his own father. 

These Apaches are the best of hunters, 
and though rifles long ago superseded other 
weapons they still are wondrous cunning 
with the bow and arrow. As trailers they 
are like bloodhounds. One of them, laying 
a grimy and impressive finger on my chest 
and breathing fumes of mescal about the 
premises, assured me that unless I had a 
long start he could find me, no matter where 
I wenf. A pebble turned, a lichen bruised, 
a leaf torn, a grass blade bent, a mark left 
in dust or mud, a twig broken—these are 


his stomach after this exploit, so it would 
expand and hold more. This is a result of the 
ancient practice of making the most of things 
when they were to be had, and at other times 
doing without. When these scouts have 
eaten ahead of their allowance tljey seldom 
ask for more and never complain. If they 
suffer a feeling of hollowness they go to a 
“hog ranch” and get drunk. For purposes 
of discipline they are put through the forms 
of soldiering, but they are seldom trusted 
with important duties, and as they cannot 
read the Army regulations they are supposed 
not to know them. If a white soldier gets 
drunk and sleeps on post he is sent to prison 
for ten months and suffers a loss of ten 
months’ pay, but an Indian escapes with a 
few days in a guard' cell and a small fine 
for the same offense. These red fellows 
often wrangle among themselves, but rarely 
attack a white man. 

The other night a too exhilarated Apach* 














































14 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; 


STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


■truck a cavalry man on the head -vs ith a 
bottle, stunning him and causing a flow of 
blood. Thinking that their comrade had 
been killed, nearly all of the troopers or¬ 
ganized a lynching party and order was re¬ 
stored only with great difficulty. 

When off duty the Indians are seldom al¬ 
lowed to have access to their arms. The 
carbine racks are locked and put in charge of 
a sergeant, who has orders to call a guard at 
the least show of trouble; but this trouble 
seldom happens. Their civilization is only 
a veneer, however. Most of them go back 
to their tribe after their enlistment has 
been served and are willing to be bad In¬ 
dians once more. The nomad is strong in 
them. They will leave their quarters in 
the middle of the night and roam off into the 
■woods, and during a fall of snow and hall, 


when most people would prefer to be In¬ 
doors, I came upon half a dozen of them 
tranquilly conversing under a tree a mile 
from the fort. Near by they had erected a 
sweat house, where they take a sort of Rus¬ 
sian bath in the steam created by pouring 
water on hot stones. After this rite they 
leap into the icy brook that* flows past the 
door and scramble into their uniforms. In¬ 
dians in government service draw the sahie 
pay, rations and clothing allowance as white 
soldiers, and 40 cents a day beside for their 
ponies. This gives to each of them about 
526 a month in cash—unspeakable wealth to 
a red man. One of the Indians at Fort 
Huachuca had saved .$110 and was looking 
forward -with joy to his deliverance and to 
220 consecutive days of intoxication. When 
picked up from the floor and started for bed 
he would solemnly wink one eye, remark, 
"Four more days, hunnerd ten dollar,” and 
try to go to sleep again. 


CHINESE MAKE There are 

two or three 

THEMSELVES USEFUL Chinamen at 

Fort H u a- 

chuca—canny fellows, industrious, close 
mouthed, as the way of them is. They own 
a cow or two, they are the milkmen, laun- 
drymen, money lenders and restaurateurs. 
Government has permitted them to build a 
couple of houses on the reservation, and in 
one of them they serve a cheap but palatable 
meal to such of the soldiers as want to vary 
the monotony of barrack diet once in a while. 
Like most Chinamen, they spend next to 
nothing on themselves, and the oldest of them 
is reputed to be worth $60,000. When army 
red tape has not been untied fast enough and 
payment has been delayed, even the officers 
have found these Mongolians to be friends of 


a certain sort, for they were ready to advance 
funds for a consideration. 

Women are few in and about these frontier 
posts. In time of Indian troubles they may 
be in danger and they ust, in any case, be 
prepared to undergo pr,, ations of which those 
in the Eastern forts know little. There are 
few married troopers. Such women as are 
found in the resorts outside of the reserva¬ 
tion—Mexicans, half breeds and reformatory 
graduates—seldom appear in the post itself. 
Officers’ wives suffer for society and their 
children for schools. The youngster who 
grows up in a lonely station on the plains 
or among the mountains, even though his 
father is a colonel, will lack something of the 
finish of the lad who has gone through the 
public schools, yet he will quickly learn self¬ 
trust and independence; he will learn to find 
his way in the wilderness, he will learn to 
use a gun, he w'ill know how to tramp and ride 
and climb and cook, and he will be good com¬ 
pany for the enlisted men when they are re¬ 


leased in parties of three and four, as they 
often are, to go a-hunting. The mothers of 
these boys learn to trust them aw'ay from 
home, and their fathers would be ashamed of 
them if they never wanted to leave it. 

The son of an 

THIS BOY officer in one of 

NEEDED NO NURSE. ZZt Tor u. 

went hunting one day last winter. He did 
not return that night. His parents were not 
concerned; he had food and blankets. Next 
night he was still absent and a snow storm 
was raging through the mountains, the flakes 
pelting under the drive of a bitter wind. His 
parents began to take thought of the boy 
and two or three men were sent out over his 
probable trail, with blankets and whisky. 
On the third morning they met him, run¬ 
ning behind a supply wagon on the road lead¬ 
ing to the fort, running to keep warm, for his 
face was blue w'ith cold. He had a string of 
rabbits in the wagon. When one of the sol¬ 
diers dashed up and urged him to take a 
swallow of liquor, the boy turned an eye of 
astoni.shment upon him and told him to go 
to-. 

In these great Western ranges, ■where in 
ten thousand square miles the population is 
smaller than that of a Single block in New 
York, wild animals are still to be found and 
hunting is a part of the routine. The coyote 
still sings his plaintive ballad to the moon, 
the bear and mountain lion dispute the 
right of way through the passes, deer are 
often met in the woods and one may see an 
antelope, jack rabbits and gophers are steady 
company and about Huachuca the soldiers 
are in much dread of what they call ‘‘hydro¬ 
phobia skunks.” Their hydrophobia is a Ac¬ 
tion, but it keeps the men from trying to 
play with them, as they certainly would other¬ 
wise. Even the Indians are fond of their 
dogs, and if you do harm to a dog or cat in 
the barracks, you break a soldier’s heart and 
may get your own head broken as well. Once, 
when a band stand w’as needed at a w'cstern 
post and there was no money for the pur¬ 
pose, an assessment of 10 cents a week was 
levied against every owmer of a dog, and the 
band stand was built In short order. 

The game that appears in too great abund¬ 
ance in summer includes snakes, centipedes, 
tarantulas, scorpions and mosquitoes, but sev¬ 
eral of the posts where these things most 
abound have been given up—not because of 
the creeping things, but because of the lack 
of water, the undue cost of maintenance, and 
the heat. 

Everybody knows of Fort Yuma, where the 
thermometer frolics up to 150 degj^ees, be¬ 
cause that is where the awfully wicked sol¬ 
dier was, w'ho, having died and gone straight 
to the bad place, returned next night for his 
overcoat. He has little company from the 
other frontier posts In his present place of 
residence, I warrant. 

The American soldier, as you find him in 
the frontier post, may not be quite the equal 
of the soldier of the day when our Army 
numbered only 25,000 and could, therefore, be 
culled with caution, but he is a good, husky, 
sturdy, courageous, dutiful, average man. 



THE RAILROAD TOWN AT FORT HUACHUCA. 
















Aboard a Transport 



ELL, 
days 
sighs 
low in 
another 
freckles, 
whistle 
and the 


the harvest 
are over,” 
a young fel- 
plmples to 
one In 
as the 
screech e s 
sailors be¬ 
gin their yo-hoing at 
the gang plank and 
cables. Both young 
fellows are soldiers, 
and are looking sad¬ 
ly ashore from the deck of an Army transport. 
Their harvest probably means the gathering of 
a large crop of wild oats In the meadows of 
New York City, and they are leaving those 
sunny fields for foreign service. No more 
beer, no more theaters, no more suppers at 
Delmonico’s after the opera, no more swell 
society, no more anything that you buy for 
$13 per month. They will smell Cuba and 
Porto Rico for the next two or three years 
and their joys will he different from those 
that linger freshly in their memories. 

These lads are hut a couple in over a hun¬ 


dred of rookies who have just been drawm 
from one of the recruiting rendezvous and the 
steamship Rawlins is about to take them to 
Matanzas, Havana, Cieilfuegos and other 
places. They are in the sober dress of the 
Army, with blue In the flannel of their shirts, 
blue in their caps, jackets and trousers; blue 
in their overcoats and blue in their spirits, 
especially so soon as the Rawlins, the same 
being without bilge keels, hence vulnerable 
to the activities of the sea, has passed the 
lights, buoys and beacons and begins to dance 
in the long swells that an east wind sends 
rolling against the coast. 

If nobody mentioned seasickness maybe no 
one would be seasick, but the gloomy person 
who always smuggles himself aboard ship 
and talks on forbidden and abhorrent themes 
Is around, and shortly the mourners’ bench 
on the upper deck is full, and its occupants 
are empty of everything except grief. They 
sit there, softly damning their luck and 
blaming the scenery; supper call finds them 
unwilling listeners; the cheerful soul that 
suggests pork and molasses and other tooth¬ 
some dainties has no other applause than 
groans, and when the stars and everything 
else have come out, the defenders of the na¬ 
tion lay sprawled in various unkempt atti¬ 
tudes on the damp planks, in the chill air, and 
are too disgusted to know or care whether 
they are getting pneumonia or not. They 
merely w*ant to be allowed to die Quietly, 
and without having anything said about it, 


or about pork. Nobody seems a hero when 
he Is seasick, and there are officers, in the 
state rooms of the same ship, who do not in 
the least look as if they were entitled to their 
commissions. 

Meantime at the supper call, below decks, 
a line of soldiers with tin stomachs devious¬ 
ly meanders up to the kitchen door. It has 
to go in several folds, in order to accommo¬ 
date itself to the confined space, thereby 
suggesting a large blue snake. As the head 
of the snake secures a ration it is lopped off 
and a new one grows just behind it, w'itli the 
same appetite. When the last of these threat¬ 
ening heads, the same being the tall, has 
been pacified and the cook has said: “Whew” 
and sponged his face, there Is a silence 
broken only by the gnashing of teeth, and 


made any provision for parlor theatricals, 
or poker, or balls, or ligl't suppers, or 
much of anything else. He eais and slips 
around on the wet deck, and sits in the lee 
of hatchways, swapping fitlsehoods with his 
bunkics, and in wild weather he spends his 
time in being pale and groaning, and forlorn¬ 
ly cursing the luck that made him sell his 
farm. At intervals he goes to the rail and 
casts aspersions, and his breakfast, on the 
Atlantic. He needs something to occupy his 
mind. 

When an organized regiment, or company 
in charge of its own officers, is carried from 
one' point to another, a routine is observed 
not unlike that of a camp. There is guard 
mount every morning, the policing of quar¬ 
ters is thorough, there are the morning and 



OFF FOR FOREIGN LANDS. 


such of the participants as do not feel worse 
and go upstairs, feel better presently and go 
to bed in the cellar. 

For life on a trans- 

TRANSPORT LIFE port, to an enlisted 

man, is not exhil- 

‘ arating. The Wom- 

EXHILARATING. Christian Tem¬ 

perance Union — 
the only enemy in the world that makes him 
quake—will not allow him to have beer, and 
the builders and the authorities have not 


j evening Inspections, sick call is sounded 
twice a day, the colors are hoisted at 8, 
when the guard is chauged; then, at sunset, 
the band or the drum and fife corps appears, 
all on deck uncover or salute, and as the fiag 
comes down, “The Star Spangled Banner” 
sounds from the bridge, and the day is over. 

But when recruits are the passengers, for¬ 
malities are omitted. They are not organized 
into companies, hence they have no officers, 
and, as happens in this instance, they repre¬ 
sent all branches of the service. Being free 

















16 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER : STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


to dress as they please, they do not try to 
please, and, unless it may be for the chevrons 
of an Infrequent sergeant or corporal, there 
is no way to tell what they belong to, save 
by the color of the cord with which they tie 
their campaign hats to their buttonholes: 
white for infantry, yellow for cavalry and red 
for artillery. They are an average, happy-go- 
lucky set, and the w'ay they wear their 
clothes would distress a martinet of a Euro¬ 
pean army. This one’s overcoat is buttoned, 
the next one’s is unbuttoned, and the third 
man hasn’t any overcoat. This man is clad 
only in shirt and trousers; the next, in all 
he has, and shivering for more. Service 
caps and soft hats are worn indifferently, 
and on the second day out, two or three of 
the men appear in khaki. 

In lack of officers, 
COIVllvlANDS ARE the sergeants and cor- 
WIPAWT porals prod these 

IV'chaps occasionally 

TO BE OBEYED. and send them below 

to clean the decks, or 
their faces. The quiet and immediate man- 


suddenly interested, he sleeps on a wire mat¬ 
tress. supported on a gas pipe frame, those 
being better than wood, because buffaloes 
never hide in the crevices. But he never 
knows exactly what will happen to him when 
he is sent to the West Indies or Gulf ports, 
for his interest may be subordinate to those 
of the freight. They are so in this case. He 
is consigned to between-decks, a chilly, light¬ 
less, ill ventilated cavern, where he is Ifem- 
med in by dunnage and bales and boxes, and 
his bunks are displaced and packed away, 
to economize room. Crosswise .of the ship, 
both forward and aft of the engine room, 
are planted rows of upright timbers, about 
two feet apart, and opposite a similar 
row seven or eight feet distant. To each 
pair of these posts are slung two hammocks, 
one above another, A.fewjnen.elect.to.sleep 
on the long benches that extend on each side 
of the dining table. To sleep in a hammock 
—not the kind you string from tree 
to' tree in the country, ' but a strip of 
canvas that looks smaller than your¬ 
self when you try to get into it—is an 


sheeting from their sides like snow in a 
Western blizzard, the sea is black, with lines 
of white and clouds of green, and the ship, 
catching the gale abeam, rolls as if she were 
going to turn turtle. Her slant is 45 degrees. 
Bang goes a cabin window; then another, 
and presently all the lights are knocked out. 
The women scream, or laugh hysterically, 
and there is a fantastic assemblage of the 
half dressed, and of people in bath robes 
in the saloon, wailing the loss or ruin of their 
clothes. All galley fires are out, and meals 
are not to be thought of. An officer s horse 
on the upper deck turns a back somersault 
out of his stall and is killed—a horse that 
has safely made the journey to the Philip¬ 
pines and back. The sick ward is entered 
by a Niagara of green sea. which falls on 
the men in the berths, and seems to fill the 
measure of their discontent. Medical stores 
are ruined, food supplies and freight are 
injured, the quartermaster’s papers are pulp, 
personal property is lost and damaged, the 



ner in which these behests are answered is 
in touching contrast to the rebellion that so 
often ensues in the domestic kitchen when 
Mary Ann is respectfully requested by the 
missis not to put the iron pot on top of the 
teacups in the dish pan. If only the Mary 
Anns in this country could be sent to camp, 
drilled—but, no; these are Iridescent dreams. 
Commonly the soldier in his travels is better 
cared for than is the steerage passenger on 
the big liners, and is a deal cleaner. What a 
people We would be if he weren’t! On long 
trips to Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines, or 
any of those places in which we h&ve become 


art, because there are more ways to fall out 
of it than there are to stay on, and the re¬ 
cruit who has drifted sullenly to the floor 
three or four times in an evening will often 
go and sleep on an anchor. 

When the Rawlins rides 

OFF HATTERAS into an eighty-six mile 

. zephyr off Hatteras he 

IIV ” doesn’t sleep. It is an 

STIFF GALE. interesting occasion. 

The wind comes roaring 
out of a wild sky, pyramids and ridges of 
water pile higher and higher, the spin-drift 


main deck is aw'ash, and the stewards are 
wading through the saloon in bare feet, try¬ 
ing to batten the doors and fasten planks 
against the windows, tables and chairs break 
from their fastenings and are hurled against 
walls and doors with startling clamor, there 
is a frequent crash of tin and china in the 
kitchens, and what with the howl of the 
wind, the angry' burst of the sea and the 
rolls and lurches that pitch one over the 
floor and flatten him against the sides of the 
rooms and passages, there is a kind of dis¬ 
satisfaction. 


I 





































THE A^rERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


17 



RECRUITS Many of the recruits are from 

the country and new to the 
ARE sea, and they ask, with some 

I concern, when it will be time 
STOICAL, to go to the bottom. Yet 
most of them refrain from 
grumbling, and though they are cold, wet, 
dirty and you would think -wretched, they 


hole where he has been trying in vain to 
sleep, and remarks: ‘‘That’s a regular hog¬ 
pen.” He ventures this assertion without the 
least feeling, and as he might call your at¬ 
tention to the fact that the combs and tooth 
brushes supplied with rooms at the Waldorf- 
Astoria are better than those on ship board. 
Bi-‘ he is not far wrong. Civilized men and 


MAKING THEMSELVES USEFUL. 


the hay and oats and bags and boxes, and he 
can fill in with men wherever there is a gap 
in the cargo. It should be just the other way. 

And excepting the captain quartermaster 
and the ship’s surgeon, who make a dally in¬ 
spection, none of the traveling officers on 
board visits these quarters of the enlisted 
i men or asks any questions about them. They 
belong to a different sphere, belike, but a 
kind word and a little interest would not im¬ 
peril discipline. 

Cabins on an .\rmy transport are reserved 
for officers and members of their families,and 
for the few civilians who are traveling on 
Army business. They pay but a dollar a day 
as mess expenses, and nothing for passage. 
People are always as willing to pay $5 for a 
trip to Cuba, or $30 for a run to the Philip¬ 
pines, as they would be to pay $30 or $100 for 
the same trips on steamers that are not trans¬ 
ports, hence they are always trying to exert 
pull to secure staterooms, and it is even said 
that a lady with peroxide hair had a pass, 
once, but such incidents are not usual, and 
considering the moderate pay of the Army 
officer and the frequency with which govern¬ 
ment moves him about, it is but right that he 
should be allowed to take his family with 
him without '-'-ending most of his earnings 
on boat and railroad fajes. 

The cabins and fitments 

COMFORTABLE of the transports are 

about the same as 
' those of the coastwise 

THE OFFICERS. steamers, and man¬ 
agers of the commercial 
lines have audibly lamented that they were 
not worse, because their cleanliness and 
comfort make so many Army people satisfied 


take things as they come, whether the things 
are pails, that fall on them from a high 
place, or something to eat. There are not 
hammocks enough for all of them, so a few 
have been provided with cots. You can im¬ 
agine how a cot acts on a wet deck that is 
never at the same angle for three succes¬ 
sive seconds. 

‘‘Hey! Look at Sunburnt, will you?” cries 
one of the men, and those who are not too 
sick lift their heads to contemplate the do¬ 
ings of Sunburst. The ship having buried 
her nose, hit cot starts on a long slide down 
the corridor in which the tables stand. At 
the close of the run the ship stands on her 
hind feet, and back he goes with a whirl and 
a rush, sticking to his cot like a boy to his 
sled. He is encouraged by the spectators: ‘‘I 
have two nickels on you.” 

‘‘Time 3:14.” 


‘‘Do that again, this Mick in the hammick 
didn’t see you.” 

So Sunburnt starts on another trip, but thi.s 
time the ship gives a wallowing twist, and 
he toboggans briskly into an iron post and 
falls off. His nose is bleeding, and he wears 
a look of surprise as he sits in a couple of 
Inches of water, watching the continued mi¬ 
gration of his cot. 

He merely remarks: ‘‘Well, hell,” and goes 
up to the main deck to think about it. Up there 
he meets a pensive artilleryman, who sniffs 
at the odors of grease, bilge-water, sea sick¬ 
ness and wet shoes that pour up the gang¬ 
way, and inquires: ‘‘Is these them smells of 
orange blossoms they said we was going to 


run into?” 

A majority of the 

HEADQUARTERS men take to sheltered 

RCQPnMQIRI F 

ntorUIMolDLC or gtand about, say¬ 
ing nothing and show¬ 
ing a dull unconcern. 
One looks down Into the fetid and gloomy 


FOR ABUSES. 



A FAIR WEATHER CONFAB. 


American soldiers deserve better. It is the 
men, not the freight, that should have first 
consideration. These abuses result from the 
imperative nature of the commands that come 
from headquarters. A captain is ordered to 
take on a thousand tons of freight, and two 
troops of the —th Cavalry, and proceed at 
once to San Juan. It is not said to him: ‘‘Go 
as soon as ready,” but “Go.” He has to take 


to travel on them. The table fare is respec¬ 
table and the service of the stewards and 
waiters excellent. The government loses a 
little in supplying the cabin tables, but more 
than makes up for it in the other messes,to 
say nothing in the saving in transportation of 
men and goods. It costs about $1.60 per 
day to supply each cabin passenger. The 
ship’s (Tiflcers mess together at an eflcpeaic 




























18 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER : STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


of 65 cents each. The petty officers appear 
to have enough to eat when they receive 27 
cents’ worth. The sailors and firemen have 
about the same, but the soldier—poor devil— 
Is supposed to fare luxuriously on 19 cents. 
For that he gets hard tack and a chunk of 
salt horse, or bacon, or beef, for breakfast; 
soup, meat, two vegetables, hard and soft 
bread for dinner; stew or anything left over, 
with bread for supper, and coffee with each 
meal. If he wakes at 2 o’clock in the morn¬ 
ing the cook will under no circumstances 
make a Welsh rabbit for him, though even if 
he would there is no beer to drink with it, 
and the divorce of rabbit and beer is un¬ 
natural and an act of violence. If he thinks 
that he has smuggled something aboard in 
his kit that is stronger than beer, the 


The recruits gather on the forward deck—all 
enlisted men are supposed to stay forward of 
the bridge—and spread themselves and their 
wet clothes in the sun. Interest is shown 
in gulls, porpoises, flying fish and dinner time. 
Papers and magazines, some of venerable ap¬ 
pearance, are extracted from packs ' and 
pockets, and if it is Sunday the number of 
religious periodicals on exhibition Is remark¬ 
able. Some of their readers would prefer the 
Police Gazette, but the missionaries who take 
that paper never give it away. A few of the 
young braves, with nickels, buy candy from 
the commissary and sit about munching It 
with the gusto of gods in the peanut gallery. 
The blueness has gone out of their spirits 
and they tell of the good times they will have 



DINNER. 


chances are that an Inspector will find it and 
throw it overboard—or somewhere. 

For money one may buy apollinaris and 
ginger ale, but only love will purchase rum, 
and not that from any officer of the ship, 
unless it might be the doctor. .\nd they 
do say that nobody ever asks a doctor for 
a drink, because the quality of whisky in the 
medical stores is awful. 

When the Rawlins 
runs into smooth 
weather and warm 
water and the sandy 

ON A NEW LIFE. beaches and scraggy 
woods of Florida 
•ome into sight the sea sick recover and wash. 


in Havana flirting with the senoritas and 
dodging yellow fever. And after nearly five 
days of ocean travel the shores of Cuba rise 
comfortingly from the deep and the rookies 
enter upon a new life. 

Our Army transport system, as it exists to¬ 
day, is practically a new thing. It is a natu¬ 
ral result of expansion. Having islands 
to guard we must have ships in which to 
carry the guards, and arms and food and 
horses and tents and for the guards, leav¬ 
ing the commercial lines to carry mission¬ 
aries and beer. Army transportation is a 
branch of the quartermaster’s department, 
and though it is managed in Washington its 
active supervision is in New York and San 


ROOKIES 

ENTER 


Francisco. The quartermaster general desig¬ 
nates a superintendent for the service and 
he has two assistants who manage, respect¬ 
ively, the Atlantic and Pacific travel. Each 
ship is in charge of a quartermaster captain 
of the Army who supports the dignity of gov¬ 
ernment and hasn’t a very hard time, for the 
sailing of the ship and all except the mili¬ 
tary work is put unon the sailing master. 

Troops on board are in charge of their cap¬ 
tains and lieutenants, who commonly see to it 
that their companies have enough to eat and 
that they use soap sometimes. And you 
might be surprised to hear that negro troops 
are preferred by the transport men. They 
take a pride ’n their personal appearance, 
keep cleaner than some others and obey more 
implicitly. Where companies travel together 
a better order is maintained than where re¬ 
cruits are going in charge of sergeants. And 
it might be for the better if all of the crew 
were enlisted likewise. ’The clerks, engi¬ 
neers, carpenters, master at arms and espec¬ 
ially the navigators, are quite satisfactory, 
as they are, and the stewards are as good as 
those on the ocean liners: but the sailors and 
cooks will run away and play in pert. 
The crew are not regarded as a part 
of the Army. They are governed by the 
rules of the merchant marine, and although 
each one signs articles binding him to serve 
for a year, there is an elastic arrangement 
that enables him to be dismissed if he 
is a poor workman. If the crew were 
picked from among the enlisted men who had 
had experience of sea faring they could be 
held in better check ashore and the discipline 
on board would be better. The pay is good, 
the quarters vary with the size of the ship, 
but are usually comfortable and the uniforms 
of all who are classed as petty officers are 
neat; a dark blue dress, quite like that of 
naval officers for cool weather and white for 
use in the tropics. What time they are in 
port these servants of the government are 
fairly happy, for they have frequent shore 
leave, and whenever they reach a city they 
never visited before they take joy in going 
to town to see their wives. They can dance 
in several languages and are often musical. 
The Rawlins’ quartet, of a flute, mandolin, 
banjo and fiddle, has nightly seances in the 
assistant engineer’s quarters and has never 
created a mutiny. 

More might be said, but as we glide Into 
Matanzas harbor and the strangely foreign 
town of pink, blue and white rises into view, 
and w'e see the good old Stars and Stripes 
floating over the ancient Spanish fort and our 
cavalry at practice on the hillside, the quar¬ 
termaster clerk, exhibiting large eyes and 
great agitation, rushes upon deck and re¬ 
ports the disappearance from the freight of 
20 cans of mincemeat, 15 pounds of blackberry 
jam, 20 pounds of candy, 12 cans of green peas 
and 6 boxes of bedeviled ham. And the re¬ 
cruits do not say a word, but with full hearts 
admire the scenery. 















On Foreign Service 


OME troubles and some 
advantages that were not 
in the catalogue when he 
enlisted confront the 
American soldier, because 
of the acquisition of our 
new lands. He has wid¬ 
er opportunities for per¬ 
spiration than he everen¬ 
joyed before, and he be¬ 
comes acquainted with 
new people, languages, 
geography and other im¬ 
proving things. He dis¬ 
covers new varieties of 
indigestion and intoxica¬ 
tion, and has the loveli¬ 
est chances to take yel¬ 
low fever and get over 
it, and so be Immune for 
the rest of his life. Beside, he gets more pay 
and the missionaries chase him and insist 
on making him comfortable. 

Yet you find him the same abroad as at 
home; patient, busy, rough, respectful, pleas¬ 
ure-loving, sturdy, profane and brave. And 
it is not the mere courage of battle that runs 
through the veins of this fine fellow; It is 
the steady, quiet courage that counts the 
cost. At Camp Columbia, a little out of 
Havana, they have been experimenting with 
yellow fever, to see if it is really due to the 
small, vicious Cuban mosquito, and so nearly 
as they can make out, it is. Men have slept 
in the clothes and bedding of fever patients 
and remained well, while others, in clean 
beds, who were not protected by mosquito 
nets, have taken the fever. Yellow jack is 
not as dangerous as it was, yet, it is not a 
thing to play with. There was a call for vol¬ 
unteers who would expose themselves to this 
fell disease. Was there any hesitation? 
“Why, sir,” said the surgeon in charge, “you 
could hardly keep these fellows away with 
an ax. We could have had almost any man 
In this post.” 

“Is that enthusiasm for science?” I asked. 

“Call it whatever you like. It is a fact,” 
he answered. 

The Spaniards were fatalists. When fever 
reached a camp the surgeons went through 
the expected forms, but said: “The men will 
die. It is written.” The Americans do not 
report a man as dead until they have seen 
him burled, and his buoyancy, that comes 
of brighter thinking, wider views, better 
fteding and higher morals, quite possibly has 



WILL AMERICAN 
SOLDIERS 
RUN DOWN? 


its part in the courage which he displays in 
putting himself into deadly danger. 

The question arises, 
whether in a term 
of years, the Amerl- 
Ican would run 
down, morally or 
physically. In a run¬ 
down region. He might in a century or so, 
but government will probably guard against 
that possibility by frequently changing the 
foreign garrisons, so that no soldier will be 
required to serve in the tropics for more than 
a single term of enlistment. One swallow 
does not make a summer, though a whole 
glassful will raise the temperature, and we 
are not to infer, from the Neely and Sheridan 
cases, that Americans will lose their sense of 
honor when they are away from home. They 
will, however, take on some color from their 
surroundings and the problems ahead of the 
War Department largely concern the health 
of body and mind of the men who are serv¬ 
ing with the colors abroad. Governor Gener- 


POINTS ABOUT 

sanitary, as well 

BARRACKS as for political 

reasons, few of 

FOR THE TROPICS. our soldiers are 

1 stationed in the 

cities, though they are within easy reach of 
them. In Cuba, where are found our most 
important camps outside of the Philippines, 
it Is a disadvantage that we own no prop¬ 
erty. It might be fixed by allowing some 
disinterested patriot to buy a bit of real 
estate and give the use of it to our gov¬ 
ernment. At present we are paying a rental 
of $300 a month for the ground on which 
Camp Columbia stands. Being but seven 
miles from Havana the ground is valuable, 
and we have so slicked it up that it will 
be worth double what it was a couple of 
years ago. But for this insecurity of tenure 
buildings of a more permanent sort would 
be erected, although they make a surpris¬ 
ingly good appearance as It is. In a hot 
country the architecture will differ from 



SANTA CRISTINA BARRACKS, MATANZAS—OLD SPANISH BUILDING. 


al Wood believes that it is best to keep the 
men in the tropics. ^ 

“I don’t think they will deteriorate in one 
generation,” says he, “and it takes a little 
time to acclimate them. Allow two years of 
service to bring a soldier into the best con¬ 
dition. He will learn in that time to protect 
himself, and will become less and less sus¬ 
ceptible to tropical diseases. The army has 
made a good showing in Cuba. There are no 
scandals, and the health is up to the best 
standard at home. The troops stand every¬ 
thing as well as the natives.” 


that of the cool states, and they who planned 
Camp Columbia did wisely to follow the 
Spanish in the matter of wide, airy struc¬ 
tures, large windows and tile roofs, where 
such things could be used. Tropical bar¬ 
racks must stand well off from the ground 
to allow air and snakes to pass freely un¬ 
derneath, must have a-plenty of doors and 
windows, double roofs, iron bedsteads and 
swearing rooms to which the men can re¬ 
tire and lock the door when they have had 
an encounter with a tarantula, a scorpion 
or a centipede. There are certain iastcU, 










20 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


IS WELL 
SITUATED. 


that shall be nameless, which infest the 
wood of the barracks and are so plentiful 
that It seems as if they livel on the wood 
Itself. Nothing thus far discovered has 
made barracks bug proof. 

For situation it is 

CAMP COLUMBIA hard to excel Camp 

Columbia. It stands 
on the ridge at well 
named Buen'' Vista, 
commanding a glori¬ 
ous outlook on the Gulf of Mexico. The 
purple waters shoal to turquoise at the 
beach, and lines of white roll back and forth 
along the shores, forever. The red roofs of 
a hamlet a mile or two away shine through 
palms and almond trees, and on the land 
side, where one finds miles of Spanish in- 
trenchments, are a couple of sleepy villages, 
dominated by houses of some ancient con¬ 
sequence, but at present rusty and neglected. 


AMERICANS We talk much of the 

advance made in the 

REVERSE past century, but in 

ns way is it better 

SPANISH WAYS. shown than in Camp 

Columbia. It is im¬ 
pressive, because only a ten-inch gunshot 
away are the crags of the harbor entrance, 
crowned by the Morro and the Cabanas, and 
these are types of works which are as obso¬ 
lete as fiint-lock muskets. Whatever the 
Americans are doing now is the opposite of 
what the Spaniards did before them. Into 
those vast and gloomy labyrinths not only 
were prisoners crowded, but garrisons. They 
lived in casemates and chambers like dun¬ 
geons, seekihg to escape heat. by^. getting 
away from light and air. There was no sani¬ 
tation, and when the Americans came into 
possession, the task of cleaning the quarters 
required weeks of time and the use of many 



It Is warm enough here, usually; no troop 
has ever turned out to drill with icicles 
hanging to its nose; but the breeze that 
straightens Old Glory on its staff is as full 
of vigor as it is of kindness, and while the 
climate makes men lazy it does not so com¬ 
pletely wilt them as does a dog day in New 
York or St. Louis. The barracks are long, 
well built, wooden structures, with fire pails 
at the doors, and with sections of wall that 
swing on pivots, so that when they are open 
you have light and air a-plenty. There are 
ventilators under the ridge-pole, and cor¬ 
rugated iron roofs which were surely sug¬ 
gested by the tile roofs of the Spanish city 
near by. The kitchens and dining rooms are 
extensions of the barracks, each troop and 
battery having its own. Back from these 
are the sinks and bath houses, with abun¬ 
dance of pure water, and still in the rear 
are the stables and corrals, where horses 
munch their oats in patience and explosive 
mules show off to visitors. The hospitals 
are at a little distance from the camp, the 
yallotv fever building about half a mile from 
headquarters. 


carts. The filth of ages having been re¬ 
moved, the forts are practically abandoned, 
a mere handful of men being detailed for 
guard duty, in order to prevent the amazing 
tourist from pounding them to pieces and 
exhibiting the chunks of rock and plaster 
on his parlor mantel. 

In some parts of Cuba the Spanish bar¬ 
racks are still used by American troops. 
That is the case in Matanzas and in a 
few of the many fortifications that 
line the lonely and otherwise unmarked 
shores near Havana. The barracks are of 
stone, their cement floors are easily kept 
clean, and they are not only durable and 
safe from fire, but cool. Where such quar¬ 
ters do not avail, the airy wooden structures 
are erected. It indicates the health among 
our troops when it is shown that of over 
1,200 men at Camp Columbia but 2 per cent, 
are on the sick list, and kicking mules and 
too vehement foot ball are responsible for 
some of the entries. There are seldom more 
than thirty men in the hospital. An uncom¬ 
monly tidy hospital it is, too, with an operat¬ 
ing room furnished with all modern anti¬ 
septic appliances. Recoveries here are as 
rapid as in the states, and, in addition to 


the hospital stewards, there Is a young 
woman nurse with a smile that may delay 
recovery in some instances. Each patient has 
an allowance of forty cents a day, which is 
spent as the surgeons direct. 


If the health of 

FEW DESERTIONS the troops is shown 

■ ^ Qnw iu this report, the 

A I nArrl discipline and sat- 

CAMP COLUMBIA. isfaction (which in 

this case appear 
together) are betokened in the infrequency 
of desertions. In three months there were 
but seventeen runaways. It is not so easy 
to get away from Cuba as it is from Chi¬ 
cago. Now that the canteen has been abol¬ 
ished there will be a great increase in de¬ 
sertions, and in crime and drunkenness. So 
long as the men could get beer in their own 
camp, they were content, but that last com¬ 
fort being denied them, they haunt the 
wretched groggeries that spring up in the 
neighborhood of the posts, and in Cuba the 
liquor is especially bad. The cheap native 
rum (aguadiente) is a veritable poison. It 
sells for 10 cents a quart and Is as near to 
plain alcohol as any liquor can be. It is 
peddled In every village, and the natives who 
enter camp on various pretexts (though they 
are supposed to be barred) often have a flask 
in their pockets which they will sell for 
enough to buy twice as much more. The 
Cubans use this stuff with moderation and 
never get drunk, but moderation, even In 
abstinence, is not an American characteris¬ 
tic, and after a short experience with this 
fire water, the soldier is a candidate for 
what he calls the "bug house,” thereby 
meaning the insane asylum. 

It is the misuse of liquor that makes his 
officers chary of giving much liberty to him. 
During the times of quarantine, when 
smallpox or yellow fever is abroad, no en¬ 
listed man Is permitted to leave camp, and 
until lately the troops stationed near Havana 
were allowed in that city only between the 
hours of 8 A. M. and 4 P. M. If they were 
seen in the streets after 4 o’clock they were 
arrested by the police and their officers were 
notified. Indeed, the police were a trifle too 
officious, and would demand to see a sol¬ 
dier’s pass, whenever they felt like it. One 
poor fellow who was trying to see the sights 
and was behaving in an exemplary manner, 
was arrested no less than three times in a 
single day, so that his day off was mostly 
a day in. 


CUBAN POLICE 
MENACE 


This arbitrary con¬ 
duct of the police, 
and their fear of 
Americans, which 


HAVANA’S PEACE. has led them to cut 


and shoot because 
they believed their lives lli danger from 
Yankee fists, has seriously threatened the 
peace of the island on one or two occasions, 
the worst outbreak occurring at Matanzas, 
where several hundred soldiers undertook to 
raid the jail and fight the police. The civil 
authorities were helpless, and the rioters 
were not subdued until their own comrades 
had been hurried into town and had driven 
them back to camp with loaded carbines. 
That is a kind of thing that could hardly oc¬ 
cur in a home city, for its cause is in race 
difference, not to say race dislike. The 
Cuban police have no power to hold our sol¬ 
diers for violations of ordinances and such 
offenses Indeed, all soldiers arrested for 
other than capital crimes must be returned 
to the military authorities. 

There is little doubt that this lack of 
power to cope with our men has embittered 
many of the Cubans toward the Americans, 
and there are. unfortunately, reckless and 























THE AMERICAN SOLDIER; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


21 




unteer occupancy, left a bad Impression on 
them. The regulars are better behaved, be- 
caupe they arc better officered and are held 
more strictly accountable for misconduct. 
If the Cuban police, especially the rurales, 
or country constabulary, were to take on the 
dress and manner of our own peacemakers 
there might be less friction between them 
and our troops, but they are arrayed like 
soldiers, with pistols and long knives, and 
sometimes with rifles, as well as the usual 
clubs, and the having of a weapon is with 
many a temptation to use it. 

One officer makes the bold assertion that 
all Cuban women are very good or very bad, 
and the very bad ones get the money of our 
soldiers. Vice flaunts itself in the towns 
with an openness that would startle and ap¬ 
pal the people of the north, but the fact 
that It is licensed gives to the authorities a 
better hold upon it than It is possible to 
gain in our cities. 

These affairs are unpleasant, but they seem 
to be inevitable, and they have pertained to 
the well or ill being of armies from time im¬ 
memorial. We have, never licensed vice in 
our Army. In some of the Latin countries a 
certain number of women are allowed to re¬ 
main near the troops, even on marches, “for 
the good of the service.” We have not yet 
come to that, but It is conceded that when 
on foreign service the soldier is less Inclined 
to be a Sunday school scholar than he is at 
home. Like other folks, he takes on some¬ 
what of the character of the people among 
whom he finds himself, and if only the Wom¬ 
en’s Christian Temperance Union could pro¬ 
vide members of its own society for his 
company, our man at arms would lay asids 
his gun and go up and down the streets play¬ 
ing on a golden harp. But in Cuba he does 
not find the Union, and he does find evil 
resorts and places where men drink and play 
cards—for beans. The heat and the cus¬ 
toms may soften him if he stays long, and he 
may learn to be sensible in his drinking, and 
not aggravate the heat of the tropics with 

.suailenw. A n g 1 cS . x o B 

^^MANYANA^^ seems to be the least 

FLOURISHES but' lu'T'uT* 

IN THE CAMPS. Jl. Tn 

ready the manyana begins to flourish in the 
camps, and more than one man adopts as his 
rule of conduct the maxim, “Never do to-day 
what you can Just as well put off till to¬ 
morrow.” As a result, Johnny gets behind 
In his correspondence, and his colonel has 


there was peace for two or three weeks. 
But while some of the rpen are heedless and 
many appear to have no family ties, others 
are constantly pining and honing for their 
friends and relatives. Homesickness is one 
of the most bothersome and stubborn of dis¬ 
eases. Men in the barracks actually die. of 
it. Knowing this, the officers have to devise 
ways and means for getting rid of nostalgic 
cases by exaggerating injuries and infirmities 
to , such a degree that the victim' can be 
passed out and sent home by the surgeons. 
Every : transport carries back to* the-States 
young fellows who appear to be in the sound¬ 
est of health, but who show certificates that 
make them appear to be long sighted, near 
sighted, game legged, hollow chested, pigeon 
toed or wrong in some of their works. If 
they were net thus passed by the surgeons 
the chances are that they would contrive to 
steal discharge papers, fill them out, forge 
needed signatures, run the guard, swap their 
uniforms for the rusty raiment of some 
neighboring farmers, who would be tickled 
nearly to death at the chance to wear pretty 
clothes, make for the nearest seaport and 
ship as sailors or stowaways. When a man 


SABER PRACTICE, 

has set his mind on getting out of the Army 
he is not a very good soldier and he might 
as well go home. 

There is a reward 

FURLOUGHS FOR for good conduct in 

onnH shape of a fur- 

GOOD lough, which is 

usually granted at 
the end of the sec¬ 
ond year, or beginning of a second enlist¬ 
ment, and although a single month is ac- 


SOLDIERS. 


bullying fellows among our garrisons who 
treat the polite little natives with scorn and 
deride them as "splcketys,” w-hatever that 
may mean. It is the rowdy soldiers who have 
made it-hard for other Americans to get 
Justice in West Indian courts. Immoral as 
they are, the Cubans and Porto Ricans are 
not used to violence, and the street brawls, 
which were common in the days of the vol- 


a flood of letters in every mall asking if 
Johnny has been killed in battle, or deserted, 
or overeaten himself, or had any other 
awful thing happen to him. One colonel 
was so pestered by these beseechments that 
he went to the soldier whose neglect ap¬ 
peared to cause the most anxiety, and stood 
over him while he wrote a letter, made him 
seal, address, stamp and post it, and then 


counted to be a pretty good vacation, a firgf 
rate man may have two, and in a few in¬ 
stances he has secured even three. Soma 
of the men never ask for a furlough. They 
are short of relatives at home, or their peo¬ 
ple live far away, or they best like the so¬ 
ciety of their own comrades. The officers 
are having an especially hard time just now, 
for the Army has too few captains and lien- 
tenants, and many of them are doing the 
work of two men. One lieutenant at Camp 
Columbia commands a troop, acts as squad¬ 
ron adjutant and is in charge of both the 
post exchange and laundry. 

Like the men, the officers receive a 10 
per cent, increase in pay while on foreign 
service, but there Is a general complaint that 
so far as Cuba is concerned this does not 
meet the increased expenditure. For some 
reasons, probably because the islands are 
farther from home and men are reluctant to 
go there, service in the Philippines is re¬ 
warded with a 20 per cent, advance. This is 
to cover. certain extra expenses, such as In¬ 
creased laundering, frequent changes of 
clothing and the support of families in the 
home country. Although the Cubans sell 
to one another for sums that are surprising¬ 
ly low, they are a thrifty lot when It comes 
to dealing with Americans, and many of their 
goods cost, to the soldier, double what the 
same articles cost in the states. So, In the 
matter of rents. When an officer is in a 
government post, quarters are assigned to 
him, for which he pays nothing, but on de¬ 
tached or foreign service he receives for the 
rent of a house $24 a month. This would 
be enough for any usual house in a smalL 
dull Spainish city, but the wily Cubans take 
advantage of the necessity of our officers and 
for an ordinary sort of residence will charge 
$60 a month. The difference between $24 and 
$60 the officer must make up out of his own 
pocket, or else go out and sleep on the grass. 
As if this were not enough, the people 
si>onge on the officers and men outrageously. 
The women go silently to the door of a bar¬ 
rack or an officer’s house and stand there 
looking at the residents in a way 
to break their hearts. It takes months 
of practice before they can summoa 
courage to say to these poor mendi- 


“ROOKIES’' ON THEIR NEW MOUNTS, CAMP COLUMBIA. 


CAMP COLUMBIA, 

cants, “Vamos!” and to see them wander 
away In silence, without feeling a mighty tug 
at their consciences. One can never tell 
which are the deserving cases and which the 
undeserving. Just after the American oc¬ 
cupancy it was found that many Cubans who 
were applying for alms in ragged coats and 
skirts, were well-to-do people who owned 
houses and plantations and had pots of money 
hidden in the ground. But the generous 
Americans did not bother to inquire. Many 













THE AMERICAN SOLDIER; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE, 




of tiie officers supported a Cuban family 
apiece, and one colonel who undertook to 
provide sustenance for two families of 
paupers allowed nothing but the bare neces¬ 
sities of life to himself. If that sort of 
thing were usual foreign service would not 
be widely sought, even at a 60 per cent, ad¬ 
vance in pay. 

The work of our Army abroad is not easy, 


canteen lasted the men had a pleasant club, 
where nothing but beer and sarsaparilla was 
served, and the earnings of the bar were 
$9,000 a month. It yielded a return of from 
$100 to $160 a month to each troop—a suffi¬ 
cient sum to obtain many little extras for the 
table as well as to fit out the base ball and 
foot ball teams and buy a quantity of reading 
matter. Though the ration is ample, those 


paper and stamps. It Is open until 11 o’clock 
at night. There is a Temperance Union, with 
a meeting place of its own and 150 members, 
and although some of the old soldiers gibe 
at it and call the boys Parson and Deacon, 
this is not allowed and there Is punishment 
for any fellow who makes sport of the faith 
or religious tendencies of his comrades. The 
Young Men’s Christian Association also has 
a flourishing station here, with books and 
tables for reading and writing, and a piano, 
and here occasional services are held, or ad¬ 
dresses made by roaming reformers. The 
post school is fairly attended, and the offi¬ 
cers have a lyceum, in which they are obliged 
to study Spanish. Teachers are also found 
for such of the men as wish to speak the 
resonant language of the late owners of the 
island. 

No essential changes are made In diet, on 
tropical service, but post gardens will be cul¬ 
tivated, and in time the men will learn to eat 
less meat and more fruit, rice and beans. 
This change will not be made suddenly, as it 
has been found that soldiers who tried to be¬ 
come Cubans in twenty-four hours have never 
succeeded. The dress has not been changed 
much, either, except that khaki is more worn 
than blue and the officers dress in white, with 
helmets. The common rig for hot weather is 
a chambry shirt, with khaki trousers. It does 
not look military, especially when it goes with 
a wilted campaign hat, but it is comfortable. 

Already these lads in Uncle Sam’s service 
are talking of Investments in Cuban real 
estate and industries, and acquiring black- 
eyed wives and olive colored families; but 
one old cavalry sergeant shakes his head 
when he hears this talk. He quit the service 
and put several thousand dollars into a to¬ 
bacco plantation. As soon as he had a fine 
crop ready for cutting all the native hands 
struck for fancy wages. His crop was ruined. 
So was he. Now he is in uniform again, poor 
but wise, and he believes that the United 
States will be good enough to work for, 
henceforth. 



GROOMING HORSES, CAMP COLUMBIA. 


though an effort is made to confine the exer¬ 
cise to the two ends of the day, so that the 
men can keep out of the hot sun at noon. 
The day’s routine at Camp Columbia is this: 

Reveille. ,S A. M. I Recruit drill recall. 11:00 

Assembly . 6:151 Recall from fatigue 11:45 

Mess call . 6:30| Dinner . 12:00 


Sick call. 7:00 

Fatigue call. 7:10 

Boots and saddles.. 7:S0 
Recall from drill... 8:55 

Water call. 9:30 

Guard mount. 9:30 

Pack drill. 10:15 

Mountain battery 
drill . 10:20 


Fatigue call.1 P. M. 

Recall from fatigue. 3:30 
Water and stable 

call . 3:45 

Supper . 5:00 

Retreat . 6:30 

Tattoo . 9:00 

Call to quarters.... 10:45 

Taps . 11:00 

On Sunday, church call sounds at 7:30 P. M., 
and on Saturday there is inspection at 8:20 
A. M. and litter be.irer drill at 11:15. The 
heaviest work is that of the long practice 
marches in the hot sun. 

Much is done for the soldiers. They have 
an excellent post library, with magazines and 
papers, and, furthermore, each troop of cav¬ 
alry has a little library of its own. While the 


who want occasional change may have it in 
the post restaurant, where the cooking is good 
and prices are kept so low as barely to cover 
expenses. Steak and potatoes cost a quarter, 
pork chops 20 cents, ham and eggs 20, raw 
oysters 26, oyster stew 16, fried fish 20, pigs’ 
feet 10, coffee 5 and jams, pickles, cigars and 
so on in proportion. Beer of the beat brews 
was 25 cents a quart and 15 cents a pint. 

There are two or three billiard tables, a 
good bowling alley and a dance hall, with 
160 square feet of waxed floor, and canvas 
dressing and reception rooms at the sides. 
All festivities used to be paid for out of the 
earnings of the canteen, but now the men 
have to take a collection, though the expense 
of a dance is little enough, as lights are free 
and the band is that of the regiment, which 
plays for nothing. The reading room is free 
to all well behaved troopers, and there they 
find not only papers and books, but pens, ink. 


The Hospital Service 


OBODY ever hears of 
“hospital gangrene’’ 
any more. That dis¬ 
appearance means a 
great deal. No long¬ 
er ago than our Civil 
War there was a 
loss of many lives in 
the hospitals be¬ 
cause of the unsan¬ 
itary state of what 
should have been 
the best guarded in¬ 
stitutions in the 
country. The hospitals, to he sure, were 
the creations of a moment. They were es¬ 
tablished in private houses, churches, 
theaters, stables, even, as exigency de¬ 
manded, and no degree of manual skill on 
the part of the surgeons guaranteed recovery 
after an operation. But that belongs to the 


past. Hospital gangrene and a train of 
other evils are matters of history. 

And in the advance in medical art no 
country has taken a more active share than 
ours, especially in the application of that 
art to the men who have suffered in our 
defense. It is no brag, but a serious, matter 
of fact statement, that no country cares so 
well for its wounded soldiers as does our 
own. There are larger hospitals in Eu¬ 
rope than In America, 'because there are 
larger armies, and they are kept busier 
than ours, but in appointments none com¬ 
pare with that, for example, in Hot Springs, 
Arkansas. The entire medical service. Indeed, 
has been remarkably strengthened and much 
more is done for both well and ill than ever 
was done before. No post Is without its 
hospital; no troops on the march but have 
their surgeon and hospital stewards; no 
transport sails from our shores, be it with 


only a handful of recruits, but it has its ward, 
and men with green trimmings on their 
sleeves are waiting there to look after the 
passengers, even if they are in no greater 
affliction than sea sickness. In action the 
hospital corps is never far behind. The hos¬ 
pital staff must expose itself as fearlessly as 
the fighters, and must even venture into 
more dangerous places, for It has some¬ 
times to enter a field from which the firing 
line has been retracted. These men of the 
hospital corps have their own drill, with 
litters, and in barracks or camp they are 
put through it at least every w'eek. They 
have also to learn the knack of carrying 
a wounded man according to the nature of 
his injury—with three pairs of hands, with 
two, or with one pair, as the case may be. 
They must know something of first aid to 
the injured, must be quick with bandages 
and tourniquets, and must have a smelling 
acquaintance with drugs. This refers only 



































THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


to the enlisted men who are in hospital serv¬ 
ice, for, of course, the Army surgeons know 
their calling already. 


PRIVILEGES FOR 
HOSPITAL CORPS. 


These men of the 
hospital corps re¬ 
ceive special pay 
and privileges, and 


a young fellow who wishes to enter the 
Army and to avoid some of the rough work 
about the barracks and forts can enter this 
corps if he qualifies. Certain defects that 
would not be overlooked if he were to go 
into the ranks are passed when he is seek¬ 
ing enlistment for hospital service. His 
eyes, for example, need not be so keen as 
those of a soldier who is liable to be de¬ 
tailed for sharpshooting and must try with 
a Krag-Jorgensen to pick off a man a mile 
and more away He is permitted to wear 
spectacles, which the private can seldom do, 
unless he has been for some years in the 
service and has secured a job about his post 
as mechanic, or printer, or what not. It 
would not do for a private to depend on his 
glasses. He might lose them from his nose 
in a rapid march or a fight and could not 
stop to pick them up again, yet without 
those aids to vision he would be almost use¬ 
less on the firing line. 

The hospital corps comprises 321 surgeons 
and 500 assistant or acting surgeons, most of 
whom are engaged by contract in or near 
the place where they are in service, and 200 
other surgeons among the volunteers. The 
hospital stewards number 200 and they are 
helped by 350 acting hospital stewards and 
3,800 privates. The government also em¬ 


ploys 200 women as nurses. All of the men 
in the medical corps, wherever you find 
them, are regulars. It is not to be Inferred 
from his name that the hospital steward is 
attached to a hospital. He may be tramping 
beside his regiment across the Arizona 
deserts or he may be floundering in Philip¬ 
pine sw'amps. It is his duty to look after 
the ill Jnd wounded, and he takes the hos¬ 
pital with him. In camp it may be days or 
weeks before there Is any general quarters 
for the sick. It w’as so in Chickamauga, 
w'here at first each regiment had its tent 
and the man brought in with a broken leg 
or pneumonia was put on the bare ground 
with a blanket for a bed—and he usually 
got well. Weeks passed before a building 
was secured as a shelter. 

Government maintains only four large gen¬ 
eral hospitals for the Army at home. The 
largest of these is at Presidio, Cal., but’it 
happens to be largest merely because men 
returning from the Philippines are received 
there. There is another at Washington bar¬ 
racks, at the national capital; a third at 
Port Bayard, N. M., and the most perfectly 
equipped is at Hot Springs. This latter is, 
in situation and appliances, a model insti¬ 
tution. It is one in which the government 
can take a pride and in which the patients 
take comfort. There are accommodations for 
150 and about 400 cases are treated every 
year. 


PICTURESQUE SPOT, I": 

FOR SICK SOLDIERS. 

place that oc¬ 
cupies the bottom of a rift between hills two 


23 


or three hundred feet high, and possibly a 
couple of thousand feet above sea level—the 
Ozarks, they are called. It is a democratic 
little city, where swell society jostlea gam¬ 
blers, and where the cry of the fakir and the 
crack of the rifle at the shooting gallery next 
door to the shops suggest Coney Island. Gam¬ 
bling houses are wide open at times, and 
strangers are welcome to stroll in at 
any of the so-cailed clubs and see 
young fools squander their earnings, or 
their stealings, at faro, keno, rou¬ 
lette and poker. One quarter, known as 
Happy Hollow, is the midway of the district, 
but the worst is found near the business cen¬ 
ter of the town. Arkansas has licensed this 
sort of thing, and the results appear to be no 
more evil than in New York where keepers of 
the resorts pay for immunity in the form of 
blackmail to the police captains, instead of 
to the state. The Arkansas settlement ia a 
picturesque and pleasant place, with a mild 
climate, an air made sweet by .exhalations 
from pines that clothe the .mountains far 
and near, with walks and drives into the 
tortuous valleys where glittering crystals 
of quartz may be gathered, and with charming 
outlooka from the heights across the unpeo¬ 
pled hills and river-ways. 

There would have been no town here, if it 
had not been for the discovery of the springs^ 
that gush from more than half a hundred 
caves in a mountain of novaculite, on the 
spur of which the hospital stands. These 
springs were long known to the Indians, but 
nobody took any interest in them until within 
recent years. Foreseeing their ultimate popu- 














































24 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


larity, and possible use, government in 1833 
Bet aside four sections of land, the center 
being the Big Iron spring, now called the 
"Hoke Smith fountain.” Government recained 
as much of the land as was worth keeping, 
for the hot water all flows from a ten acre 
tract, and sold the rest to the shop keepers 
and saloon men and gamblers across the 
street No adequate survey was made until 
1875, w'hen a number of squatters were found 
and ejected, and there was a sale of consid¬ 
erable property in the year following. Of 
the land which has been retained the Interior 
Department gave ten acres to the War De¬ 
partment for the erection of the hospital, and 
It spends about $5,000 a year above the cost 
of maintenance, in laying off roads and im¬ 
proving the grounds. The income to govern¬ 
ment for the use of hot water is $20,000 a 
year, derived from a tax of $30 on every tub 
in the place. Of course the "War Department 
pays nothing, but every keeper of a hotel and 
bath houfee, who has established himself on 
ground leased from government, roasts the 
visitor’s wallet as the negro shampooers 
boil his rheumatic lege in the spring w’ater. 
Government keeps two policemen on the re¬ 
servation, one for day and the other for night 
duty, and it has gardeners, foresters and wa¬ 
ter men, about tw’enty employes of that sort 
altogether. 


On one side of 

ORDERS ARE the main street 

ACTUALLY OBEYED. 


States, and on 
the other it is Arkansas, and with due re¬ 
spect to the state, the United States are the 


because they contain sulphur or eome other 
disagreeable material, but that is not the 
case. There are traces of lime and silica, but 
not enough of any mineral to affect the skins 
of the bathers or the stomachs of the drink¬ 
ers. The water is warmed by the internal 
heat of the earth and is just as effective in 
disease as water boiled over the kitchen 
range. The reason that it cures in cases 
where the water from a kitchen might not, 
is that the patients resign themselvee to 
treatment and pay attention to diet and try 
to rest and sleep and do as many physicians 
tell them. W’ere they to be as tractable 
at home as they are at the springs they 
would recover from their various difficulties 
as quickly and with less expense—for the 
people who lease water from government 
and sell meals and isleeping accommodations 
are not doing those things for their health. 
It has been given out that the hot springs of 
Arkansas were of especial value in cases of 
syphilis and other forms of blood poisoning, 
but such, is not the case. They are of not the 
slightest value in such cases—or at least, ofs 
no more value than any warm water used 
with a proper allowance of soap in anybody’s 
bath tub. And it is significant of this fact 
that these objectionable cases are not re¬ 
ceived at the army hospital. 


ATTRACTIVE FOR 
PATIENTS AND DOCTORS 


This build¬ 
ing is a 
ram bling 
c o nstruc- 


tion of brick with stone trimmings, which 
covers a little bnttress of Hot Springs Moun¬ 
tain, and is divided into several wings for 
convenient access of light and air. It is the 







I MOOerL 

ARMY amo navy HObPlTAU 
AT HOT SPRINGS , ARK . 


better. One thing that the visitor notices 
Is the command on the American side not to 
spit on the walks or to make exhibitions of 
gargling and mouth rinsing and eye washing 
in and near the springs. And the remarkable 
result is that these orders are obeyed. 

Faith cure has contributed largely to the 
success of the hydropathic treatment, al¬ 
though there is no doubt that the water has 
been a good thing for many of the people 
who go there to use it. You can see with 
half an eye that they need water. It is a 
common belief that the springs are efficacious 


only hospital in this country or any other 
that occupies a position near medicinal wa¬ 
ters. Towers and gables, trophy guns and 
a growth of ivy on the w'alls give picturesque¬ 
ness to the outer view', and the interior is 
a delight to the medical man by reason of 
its ample rooms, its hard w'ood finish, 
its painted walls, its use of tile, metal and 
cement, where such fireproof and microbe 
proof materials are available, its plentiful 
sunlight by day and gaslight at night, and 
its admirable cleanliness, quiet and cheer. 

Beside the officers’ rooms, in the adminis¬ 


tration building, there are four wards, sug¬ 
gesting ecclesiastic rather than secular oc¬ 
cupancy. Each of these is 127 feet long, 28 
feet wide and 27 feet high. They are warmed 
by steam and lighted by windows placed 
somewhat higher than usual, so that, while 
there is abundant light, there is no glare 
of the sun in the eyes of patients. The beds 
are the usual iron cots, and in busy seasons 
it is necessary to put thirty into each ward, 
or even more. Owing to its high windows 
and arched roof, there is an effect of airi¬ 
ness and space, no matter how many pa¬ 
tients the' ward may contain. The ceilings 
in the separate rooms are usually of metal, 
and much of the woodwork is waxed. There 
is a sun parlor with palms and plants, and 
what with good food and careful nursing 
the fellow who has just been roughing it 
on the plains or dodging bullets in the 
Luzon jungles must think that he has reached 
a little heaven. 

The general army hospital is the only mili¬ 
tary station in the country that is not in 
charge of a soldier of the line.. It is bet¬ 
ter so,. as there can be no clash of author¬ 
ity. There is no more reason why a colonel 
should command a battalion of .sick men than 
there is for putting a. battalion of healthy 
ones in charge of a surgeon. Conflict is in¬ 
evitable where a layman has sway over a 
man of science in the' latter’s own field. 
There never was a reason, for instance, for 
putting the astronomical observatory in 
Washington in charge of a naval officer, who 
knows a lot more about guns and boilers and 
plates and engines than he ever will know 
about stars. The surgeon in charge of the 
general, hospital, and who ranks as major, 
has all his ow’n way, and the authorities in 
Washington are good to him and give him 
everything in reason, that he asks for. 

Since the war in 

HOSPITAL IS the East began to 

IIP TO HATF increase the num- 
Ur I U UM I L. jjgj. patients, 

extensive additions and repairs have been 
made, the piazzas have beep inclosed in glass, 
hot and cold water have been introduced in 
various rooms, clothing lockers and passenger 
elevators have been installed, the roof has 
been covered with slate, a detached kitchen 
has been furnished with a three tiered oven, 
kneading machine, coffee mills, dish washing 
machine, and the reservoirs on the hill, which 
contain water pumped from the hot springs, 
have been enlarged. One of these tanks con¬ 
tains 150,000 gallons, and two lesser ones hold 
25,000 more. As 95 per cent, of the patients 
take baths, there are many tubs in the rooms 
set apart for that function, and each room 
is partitioned by waved glass plates. 

There can be little complaint as to diet. 
Here, for example, is the bill of fare for a 
single day: 

Breakfast: Pork chops, fried potatoes, 
bread and butter, coffee. 

Dinner: Vegetable soup, roast beef, browned 
potatoes, peas, bread. 

Supper: Bread and butter, stewed fruit, 
tea. 

Roast turkey, steak, ham, bacon, pork and 
beans, sausage, fish, oysters, eggs, oatmeal, 
tomatoes, macaroni, cheese and fruit are of 
frequent appearance. The enlisted man hasn’t 
a penny to pay for all this, nor for his medi¬ 
cines or nursing. The officer, however, being 
in receipt of larger wages, must pay for his 
board. He has a room, attendance and free 
prescriptions, but he pays for the same meals 
that are provided without charge to the en¬ 
listed soldiers and sailors; or, if he likes, 
he can take his meals at a hotel outside, or 
have them sent to him. 

The cures at this hospital number 60 per 



























THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


25 





rENTRANCE \ 

TO 

HOSPITAL 
GROUrSDb, 
\H0T SPRINOby 




ppS^p«pvmiwjp»6O^'0r. 


mm 

J 0 , 




S- N. ]>''jr^rY\GKTC,ARMV'4A(#< 


^ol W«os.A i}^ 




cent.—that is, 60 per cent, are returned to 
duty. Deaths are few, but it often happens 
that as a result of wounds or long standing 
disease the soldier or sailor—for there are a 
few men here from the navy—is unable to 
resume active employment, and secures a dis¬ 
charge, or is admitted to the Soldiers’ Home. 
The good showing made in this institution 
is not a result of cool, pure air,‘ quiet, good 


were interfered with there was a rush for 
the nearest newspaper and columns of crit¬ 
icism and abuse were vented upon the hard 
working and conscientious men who had the 
health of the army as their object in life. 

There was a deal of this amateur doctoring 
and nursing and meddling in South Africa 
last year, also, and the women, who were 
mostly fashionable folk from London and' 


his fevered brow and leaves there a trac* 
of violet? Not much, he isn’t. He will hide 
his brow under the bedclothes and scour it 
with the blanket or his knuckles until he has 
it crimson with fever, so that it will need 
a deal of smoothing and cooling. And even 
if he does not get the fever back by mechan¬ 
ical means, how can he ever be well with the 
gnawing pains of a new and worse than yel¬ 
low fever or typhoid or any other kind at bis 
heart, where he cannot get at it with medi¬ 
cine? And then, the agony of seeing every 
other fellow in the ward getting the same at¬ 
tention from the same angel! No; It doesn't 
do. Nurses should be middle aged and not 
too lovely. 

The thing that 

ARKANSAS GROG troubles the au¬ 
thorities at the 
hospital in Hot 
Springs is not the good women so much as 
the other kind. Yet there is not so very 
much of vice there either. Invalids do not 
need so close a watch when they take the 
air as some other people do. But the In¬ 
valids, being weak, do suffer themselves to 
be beguiled by a thirst for other waters than 
those that gush so copiously from the 
springs. With groggeries a hundred feet 
away, and the sight of citizens going into 


DELAYS RECOVERY. 


MUCH ESTEEMED. 


nursing and w’holesome food, altogether. It 
is the result of military control. Better re¬ 
sults can always be secured in an army or 
navy hospital than in a private sanitarium, 
because the patients have learned to obey. 
They take baths and doses as they have 
learned at other times to go through the man¬ 
ual of arms and the setting-up exercise. 
What the surgeon in charge tells them to do, 
that he is reasonably sure they will do; for 
he can rely on his hospital stewards—of whom 
there are twenty-one at Hot Springs, besid'e 
a couple of contract or assistant surgeons. 

There are no wom- 

WOMEN NURSES en nurses at Hot 

Springs, but there 
are in certain other 
hospitals, and they are much esteemed. 
They show qualities of patience, obedience 
and courage like those of the soldiers them¬ 
selves, with a tenderness and sympathy that 
no creature of the rude sex can even simu¬ 
late. During the Spanish war women nurses 
were held in terror in some quarters, be¬ 
cause they had not been trained to their 
work. They were mothers and sisters of the 
wounded men and their first business was to 
quarrel with the surgeons, each insisting 
that her son or brother should have the most 
and the best, and each thus pitting herself 
against the authorities. If a whim could not 
be gratified there were hysterics and scenes, 
as destructive to the order and well being 
of a home for the ill and injured as ignorance 
and neglect. Some women would bring im¬ 
possible foods to the men and insist that 
they be allowed to ^at them, because the men 
had taken a sick fancy to some indigestible 
article, and it was sometimes hard to pre¬ 
vent the smuggling of cold Welsh rabbits to 
typhoid patients. When these philanthropies 


knew no more about nursing than they knew 
about the application of screens to electro- 
ballistic measurements, had in some in¬ 
stances to be rather rudely sent away. Now 
this difficulty is over in our own army, and 
the nurses are not the w'omen who flutter 
and scream and have nerves and give them 
to other people. They are quiet, reserved, 
cheerful and competent. There is no danger 
that they will make wrong reports of temper¬ 
atures or give carbolic acid instead of quin¬ 
ine. But, behold a strange difficulty! There 
is danger that they may be too good looking! 
The nurse is supposed to help a sufferer to 
get well. Is the sufferer going to get well 
in any hurry when the angel who bends over 
him as she drops pills and thermometers 
into his mouth or feeds pap into that cavity 
with a spoon, is putting his soul in a whirl 
with a pair of tender, liquid eyes and a rosy 
smile and a voice like the passing of the 
breeze across an aeolian harp? Is he going 
to get well when this exquisite creature stops 
at his bedside and passes a lily hand across 


them and wiping the froth of Arkansas whis¬ 
ky out of their whiskers as they come out, 
the patients in the hospital can hardly en¬ 
dure it. The first day when they are strong 
enough to take a walk they go over to one 
of those forbidden and abhorrent places and 
seek that which stingeth like an adder and 
return at evening covered with stings and 
whooping with joy. That means that they 
must go to bed again and be cared for—a 
matter that gives them little concern, for 
they are willing to make their home here 
as long as government is willing to keep 
them. Be it understood, however, that while 
the patients as a class are more than con¬ 
tent, there is little or no malingering. No 
man is discharged until it is quite time that 
he should be. 

An officer remarked, apropos of the diffi¬ 
culties of keeping the men and their liquor 
in different apartments: “I wish we had a 
canteen here. It would save a lot of trou¬ 
ble. For then the men could get beer in 
moderation instead of whisky in immoderg- 






































THE AIMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


26 


tion. They will get liquor when they have 
liberty and they get It anyhow. Strangers 
bring it Into the grounds and sell It to the 
men who are sitting out there on the 
benches. This Is government property and 
everybody has a right to walk through It, 
We can’t stop every person who enters this 
park and search him to see whether or not 
he has a flask in his pocket or force him to 
tell whether ho is keeping the flask for 
his own use or some one else’s.” There are 
not many cases of out-and-out drunkenness, 
but there are cases that do not call for the 
exhibition of alcohol. 

Most of the present occupants of the hos¬ 
pital are men from Cuba, Porto Rico and the 
Philippines. Marked coutiidoration is shown 
to them, for they are retained in service 
on full pay for months together. While the 
place ii3 intended for regulars. Civil War 
veterans are admitted on payment of 40 
cents a day for subsistence—an amount that. 
In various instances, lo subscribed by friends 


or by Grand Army posts. The cases are 
malarial, chiefly, but there are many in¬ 
stances of dysentery and rheumatism. For 
the latter disease the hot waters are sup- 
pceed to be especially efflcaclous. The usual 
thing to do at the hotels is to soak in them 
and have a negro attendant rub you down. 
Then you go to breakfast and forget busi¬ 
ness and trouble and ride and walk over the 
pleatsant hills and pretty soon you haven’t 
much rheumatism and you say it is the spring 
water that did it. Very well. Spring water 
is as good as anything else. 

There is no doubt that in the army hospital 
the cures are facilitated by the brightness 
and cheer that are everywhere about the 
soldier. The diningroom is a big, airy, 
sunny place, there are smoking rooms foi 
such as use tobacco, as moot soldiers do, 
there is abundance of reading matter in the 
wards, the views from the windows are pleas¬ 
ant, there are flowers and palms and orna¬ 
mental plants in the grounds, there is a 


ready accese for friends and respectable visi¬ 
tors. Though designed for medical, rather 
than surgicalt cases and equipped with an ex¬ 
cellent dispensary and a bacteriological lab¬ 
oratory, there is a model operating room, 
with floors and walls of concrete and enamel, 
easily flushed out and drained, with none 
but rounded corners, so that microbes have 
no lodgment, with hot and cold water set 
flowing by foot levers, in order that the sur¬ 
geon need not touch any instrument or arti¬ 
cle until his hands are clean after an opera¬ 
tion, with every arrangement for washing and 
sterilizing; in brief, a surgery that conforms 
to all accepted theories and practices in the 
art that began so rudely when Ambrose Pare 
performed the first battlefield amputation and 
tied the arteries and when he stopped the 
practice of pouring hot oil into gunshot 
wounds and used a simple bandage instead. 
This was a little over 300 years ago, but the 
Improvements in medicine since that time 
make it seem 3,000. 


Homes for Old Soldiers 




VERY enlisted man 
in the United States 
Army pays 1214 
cents a month 
tow'ard his s>ipport 
when he shall ar¬ 
rive at- the age of 
discretion and re¬ 
tirement. There 
comes a time, after 
he has been in the 
business of war for 
several years, when 
he is too near-sighted and stiff in his 
joints and slow in his digestion and drowsy 
on sentry go, and if he is not hy that time 
rich enough to leave the profession of arms 
and take on a gentlemanly leisure elsewhere, 
he is free to enter the Soldiers’ Home. Some¬ 
times he does not like to do this, because it 
seems like a confession of age. But in war 
time no such imputation holds. There are 
men now in the home who are in their 
twenties, and they have seen precious little 
fighting at that. They had the good or ill 
luck to get a bullet through a leg or a lung, 
and here they are with the bronze of Philip¬ 
pine suns sail on their faces, stumping about 
the beautiful park on crutches, and with 
nothing under the heavens to do but eat and 
sleep. 

Our Civil War volunteers are almost ex,- 
travagantly sunnlied with homes, but the reg¬ 
ular soldier has only one, and that is just 
north of Washington on the hill which com¬ 
mands the city, and has a famous peep at the 
dome that Incloses a seething mass of Con¬ 
gressional wisdom every winter. The home 
Itself comprises several halls, named after 
generals and dominated by a marble building 
v.’ith a Norman clock tower. Near it are the 
usual shops and kitchens and stables, a trim 
little library, and a solidly built theater and 
concert hall. A model stable is provided for 
the horses, and, far enough away to Insure 


the quiet of the patients, is the hospital. The 
grounds, occupying 500 acres, have been laid 
out by landscape gardeners with winding 
paths and drives and ornate gates, and the 
Inmates of the place, unless they are “on the 
limits’’ for misbehavior, have the freedom of 
this broad domain, as well as liberty to ram¬ 
ble abroad at their humor. Here will gen¬ 
erally be found 860 veterans, and there is 
room for another hundred in the buildings 
already constructed. Should there be any 
considerable Increase it will be easy enough 


surgeon and a treasurer, and there are no 
meddling boards and trustees to make them 
uncomfortable and insecure. 


There are people 
who are in a far 
than 


OLD SOLDIERS 
HAVE NO CARES. 1°^” 

these old soldiers. 
They have, not a thing to fret about—no rent, 
no grocer or butcher or baker or milkman or 
coal dealer or druggist to pay, no dressmaker 
to worry them with misfits, and, indeed. 


BARNES HOSPITAL, SOLDIERS’ HOME, AT WASHINGTON. 


to put up more buildings. There need be no 
clamor over this possibility, however, because 
the home is operated without a penny of ex¬ 
pense to government. The $1.50 a year paid 
by each enlisted man, together with the fines 
that he pays from time to time for overstay¬ 
ing leave, drowning his sorrows or shirking his 
drill, and the pay forfeited by deserters, and 
unclaimed by heirs of dead soldiers, cover all 
expense of its operation. Government merely 
approves and supervises. The place is offic¬ 
ered by a governor, a deputy governor, a 


nothing to cause suffering, except the Ion 
tramps one has to take to get his liquor. A 
some of the old men tell you, with a winl 
there are speak-easies not far away, but the 
do not keep very good whisky, and, besid( 
they have to move every little while. Thei 
is a law forbidding saloons within one mil 
of the reservation and there is no canteen o 
the premisee. Whether or not these r( 
stralnts have anything to do with the coi 
duct and appearances, the men are a bette 
and soberer company than those in the bigg( 































THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


87 


homes of the volunteers. Something, to be 
sure, is due to their iouger and stricter dis¬ 
cipline and to the more careful pick of men 
for the regular Army, but the local rule also 
appears more steady and the inmates do not 
Impress the visitor as other than soldiers 
who have arrived at an inactive age.. If one 
arrives at a volunteer home on pension day, 
or views the hundreds of men wandering 
from one groggery to another in its shabby 
purlieus, he is reminded of an almshouse. 
There is no maintenance of Army drill at 
the national home. Sometimes the old men 
turn out for parades, but not often. They 
have a battery that welcomes distinguished 
arrivals; the bugle calls to rise, eat, sleep; 
and the morning and evening gun is fired, 


where, in that there is no persistence of the 
bairack system. In the larger homes the 
quarters are long rooms containing from 
twenty to fifty beds. In tne home at Wash¬ 
ington the men are iu rooms that have only five 
or sl-x beds. These rooms are entirely bare, 
except for the beds and the chests that each 
man keeps for his clothing and effects; there 
are no prints, pictures, calendars or any 
such matters; but there are sanitary reasons 
for this. The curious rule that nobody may 
bring flowers to the soldiers is rather a 
measure of protection for flowers cultivated 
on the grounds than a deprivation to the 
men, although bouquets might be kept in a 
room by one man so long that they would be 
a good deal of a sorrow to his partners. 


shows there are games—billiards, pool, baga¬ 
telle, chess, checkers, backgammon, cards, 
dominoes, quoits and recently golf. It has 
been proposed to install a small zoological 
garden in the park or at least to place some 
deer in the grounds. Two hundred and fifty 
is the daily average of visitors to the library 
and about 300 books are always out. The 
year’s reading show's an average of 15 books 
to each man—fiction and history, mostly. The 
library has about 7,500 volumes and in the 
reading room are found 17 periodicals and 
33 papers. 

The makeup of the Army has been un¬ 
dergoing a change. Before the Spanish War 
it was largely composed of Irish and Ger¬ 
mans; hence it is not surprising to discover 
here a predominance of foreigners. The 
Americans, Indeed, number barely half of the 
population. The men are younger than 
those in the volunteer homes by an average 
of seven years, the general age being 56 
years. A large majority of the Inmates are 
pensioners, but there are bencflciarles who 
live elsewhere and draw outdoor relief, as 
it is called, the maximum of this allowance 
being $8 a month. This is not granted to 
retired soldiers nor to pensioners whose in¬ 
comes equal or exceed $8. Unhappy excep¬ 
tions who do not draw pensions have an al¬ 
lowance of $1 a month as pocket money. 

Two hundred of the veterans served under 



BUILDING, SOLDIER^’HOME 
A.T J ^ ShINGTON.. 

but no man handles a rifle or walks a beat 
as sentinel. There are certain non-com¬ 
missioned officers, who do needed clerical 
work and exercise supervision over the es¬ 
tablishment, and they draw for these services 
from $5 to $50 a month. Nearly all work 
done about the home and grounds—garden¬ 
ing, carpentry, cooking, care of the horses, 
and so on—is Intrusted to the veterans, 
whose pay for such services will average but 
25 cents a day, and when one of them has 
been kicking over the traces and visiting 
forbidden places he is made to work at day 
laborer tasks without compensation. In ad¬ 
dition to these earnings, five-sixths of the 
men are pensioners, but no man receiving 
enough to live outside is admitted to the 
benefits of the home. If a veteran does not 
like it, he is at liberty to leave and, if he 
doesn’t like his new place, he can change 
his mind and return to the well filled tables 
at the home. 

There is admirable cleanliness and order 
at the Washington home, and the health 
averages good, considering that the men have 
aged in hard service and in many instances 
have suffered from wounds and illness. There 
is one funeral every four or five days in the 
cemetery outside of the grounds, and the 
hospital never lacks for patients, yet there 
is a prevalence of cheer. The arrangement 
of quarters differs from that in the great es¬ 
tablishments at Dayton, Hampton and else¬ 




?COTT 


Soldier% who are seriously inclined may at¬ 
tend either Protestant or Catholic service in 
a pretty chapel, and on certain afternoons 
the post land, which has some gray headed 
musicians in it, but is more largely made up 
of performers who are not inmates of the in¬ 
stitution, gives a free concert in the 
theater. 

In this place also 
amateurs from town 
occasionally give plays 
or operettas for the 
supposed consolation of the veterans and if a 
philanthropist feels Impelled to lecture for 
their benefit he is often permitted to do so, 
but there is no law compelling an attendance. 
There are no receipts from these entertain¬ 
ments: hence there is a slight outlay fo" 
lighting and sundries, but in a whole year 
this expense was within $400. Beside these 


NO LACK OF 
AMUSEMENTS 


Scott—the founder of the Home—in Mexico, 
but most of these are recipients of outdoor 
relief. If a soldier so elects he may not 
receive his pension at all, but can assign It 
to his parent, wife or child. Almost the 
only breaches of discipline are those of 
drinking too much and overstaying leave, but 
over 80 per cent, of the men present a clean 
record. They are, as a rule, well and clean¬ 
ly dressed, though they receive a limited al¬ 
lowance of clothing. Cast oft garments ar« 
given to tramps, who show' up at the Home 
as they do in all other parts of the land, 
and are hospitably received. Over 10,000 
meals were given last year to “transients.” 
It is understood, however, that most of these 
transients are ex-soldiers. No officer is ad¬ 
mitted to this institution. If he has served 
Jong and well he has his retiring allowance, 
which enables him to live in a home of lili 







































28 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIPB, 



IN 

JHE DINING 
1room,ivat(onw.; 
I HOME FOR ] 
\ DISABLED / 
i\ volunteer 
'^VSOLDlEPSa 


HAMPTON’S Though Dayton has the 

larger, Hampton has 

ODD HISTORY. the better known of 

these volunteer homes. 
It was founded as a home for negro soldiers 
after the Civil War—negro soldiers, and on 
the sacred soil of Virginia!—but afterward 
became a sanitarium for soldiers of all sorts, 
for the air of Hampton is said to be an espe« 
cially choice product, the seasons are mild, 
and there is bathing. The accessions of 
buildings have been rather haphazard; there 
is no defined plan in their grouping, and no 
architectural harmony. The main building is 
absurdly high, for old men should not be 
compelled to climb four flights of stairs, espe¬ 
cially when there are acres and acres of 
ground to spread in, and is topped with a 
dome, possibly suggested by that of the In- 
valides in Paris. The grounds are well kept 
and there is a pleasant walk along the sea 
edge, looking over the water where the Mon¬ 
itor fought the Merrimac and changed naval 
war for aU future time. And land war, too, 
as the invention of the Gruson turrets seems 
to show. 

In the rear of the grounds, where a slug¬ 
gish creek divides the pcpperty from that of 
the useful and excellent school for Negroes 
and Indians, is a row of the oddest ram¬ 
shackle cabins imaginable. These w'ere 
built by the men, some of whom were carpen¬ 
ters and most others not, and are boat houses 
and fishina stations where they can potter 
over lines and bait and smoke their pipes 
alone. The shacks do not add to the beauty 
of the estate, but they heighten the pictur¬ 
esqueness. One elderly man who was bob¬ 
bing for eels in a spot that did not look as 
if it had ever been visited by an eel—much 
as fisherman dangle strings in the Seine in 
Paris, not from hope, but habit—allowed that 
there wasn’t much chance of catching any¬ 
thing. but then one had to do something, once 


own. Enlisted men only are eligible for 
admission here, and they must have seen 
twenty years’ service, or have been disabled 
by wounds, injuries or disease incurred in 
duty. A soldier who served only in volunteer 
organizations cannot be received. The plan 
of this Home is similar to that in Chelsea, 
London, but it is larger and has more in¬ 
mates, while it is maintained at a smaller 
tax on the soldier. Thomas Atkins used to 
be mulcted a shilling in the pound to support 
his home, but, instead of giving a twentieth 
of his wage, the American soldier gives less 
than a hundredth, even if he is a first term 
private, while if he is a non-commissioned 
officer, his contribution is the veriest trifle. 
Paris has her famous Hotel des Invalides, 
built for a larger company than we find in 
Washington, but containing fewer men. They 
are housed in a more spectacular fashion, 
and their hospital is of world wide note, 
while the average American knows little of 
the haven in Washington. The British army 
has an asylum in Kllmainham, near Dub¬ 
lin, there is a similar institution in Berlin 
for old soldiers, and in other countries there 
•r« lesser homes; but in none of them 


employment, rather than from patriotic mo¬ 
tives, and some of them fell into bad habits 
during the thirty years that elapsed between 
the end of their soldiering and their admis¬ 
sion to the home. The nation is generous, 
and so are the states. There are twenty-six 
homes maintained by the states, though gov¬ 
ernment allows to them $100 a year for each 
inmate, and there. are the larger establish¬ 
ments at Dayton, O.; Hampton, Va.; Santa 
Monica, Cal.; Leavenworth, Kan.; Augusta, 
Me.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Danville, Ill., and 
Marion, Ind. These larger institutions, sup¬ 
ported by the general government, are known 
as homes for disabled volunteer soldiers. 
Regulars are not admitted to them, unless 


drops had been given to him In one of the 
saloons, and that while he was under their 
Influence a thief stole $130. “That’s what I 
had,’’ he said, “when I went over to get 
drunk, and I had It in bands around me legs, 
where they couldn’t see it and get It—but 
they got it. I made a fuss, and finally the 
police come and give me back $40 of it, and 
my watch; but that was all, I think one of 
the police got $20. When we go and tell the 
governor about it, he says, ‘Well, what busi¬ 
ness had you to go to a place like that?* 
Oh, he’s a good, easy man, the governor is, 
and he hardly ever puts us on the limits, 
unless we misbehave considerable.” 


LIBRARY ANT> MARBLE HALL, NATIONAL SOLDIERS* HOME, WASH¬ 
INGTON. 


is the veteran better cared lor than in the 
home of the American regular. 

“This place is the 

VOLUNTEERS ARE damnedest humbug 

QUITE DIFFERENT. 

unexpected remark of a volunteer who is 
spending his declining years in the Soldiers’ 
Horae, in Dayton, 0. By this he did not In¬ 
tend to cast discredit on the conduct of the 
place, but on his comrades. He declared 
that hundreds of them had never seen service 
that amounted to anything, and that they 
were simply a “lot of old nums.’’ This is a 
strong statement, not made for publication, 
nor accompanied by a guarantee of good faith. 
The difference between the home of the reg¬ 
ular and the home of the volunteer is, never¬ 
theless, striking. It will be remembered that 
while the regular is a finished product, and 
has been drilled into shape by twenty years 
of hard service, there are many volunteers 
in the homes w'ho hardly saw as many days 
of actual worft during the Civil War. Some 
of them enlisted because they were out of 


they have‘also been volunteers, or unless 
there should chance to be no room for them 
in the establishment at V/ashington. 

As you approach these larger homes by 
day you are sure to meet men in dowdy uni¬ 
forms of blue, cut with utmost simplicity 
and worn with any sort of hat or cap. The 
chances are that some of these estrays are 
under the Influence of liquor, and that an as¬ 
tonishing array of cheap saloons presents It¬ 
self just outside of the reservation. In Day- 
ton, w’here the buildings are the largest and 
the ground the most attractive, the veteran 
has farther to go than in some of the other 
instances, but at Hampton an astonishing 
little town called Phoebus has sprung up 
almost at the gates, and is supported, it 
would seem, entirely on the money that the 
old soldiers spend in drink. There are sixty- 
five saloons in the village—one to every 
thirty of its inhabitants—and there are black¬ 
legs who haunt the groggeries and imperil 
property that the veteran is forgetful enough 
to carry with him. One of the inmates com¬ 
plained, the other morning, that knockout 


























THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


29 




quarrels are settled without referring them 
to the authorities, and this practise is en¬ 
couraged. As might, be expected, all types 
are represented, from the dignified and in¬ 
telligent gentleman to the loafer. This home 
is open alike to officers and men. There 
are brigadier generals eating and sleeping 
side by side with privates. No distinctions 
are observed or permitted, save that the offi¬ 
cer of the day is known by his red sash and 


cers: the governor, treasurer, quartermaster, 
commissary, chaplain, surgeon and four as¬ 
sistant surgeons, who are generally old Army 
men, and an engineer and chief clerk, 
are civilian appointees. There is seldom 
any friction between the officials and the in¬ 
mates, except when the latter have been 
tarrying too long over the cups in Phoebus, 
and then the methods are summary. There is 
a court in the police station every afternoon, 
the governor being judge and jury, and the 
policemen the usual witnesses. The exam¬ 
ination takes a form like this: 


LOWER POND ON THE GROUNDS OF THE NATIONAL SOLDIERS’ HOME, 

WASHINGTON. 


•t 'em over there! See them gin mills? One 
every . second door along that street. If it 
wasn’t for the pensions there wouldn’t be one 
of ’em there.” 


BARRACKS 
ARE CROWDED. 


The barracks at 
Hampton are crowd¬ 
ed. In one or two 
of them the beds are 
in five ranks across the hall, instead of in 
two, and tents have been put up to accommo¬ 
date the later comers. These tents are 
floored, half walled by planking and have 
doors and stoves, but the men, being less 
hot blooded than in the days when they were 
facing minle balls and shell, prefer to be 
Indoors, especially at night. The inmates 
do not strikingly suggest men of war in 
these times. They are bent, they walk slow¬ 
ly, often with canes, their hair is white 
and thin and they sit for hours together on 
the benches at the beach or in chairs in their 
quarters, gazing dreamily into the distance. 
Quarreling amiably together, playing soli¬ 
taire, with their cots for tables, dozing or 
reading. For they have a good library here, 
with 9,000 volumes on the shelves, and the 
reading room contains 141 papers, 32 of which 
are German, 19 weeklies and 19 magazines. 
Last year there were 41,625 deliveries of 
hooks to 5,313 readers, which represents 
more than the number of inmates, for what 
may be called the stable population in the 
Hampton Home is only 4,800—about a thou¬ 
sand less than that of Dayton. Novels, es¬ 
pecially old novels, are in demand at the 
library, but histories of the Civil War are 
read with unabated interest, and there are 
a few who distinguish themselves by read¬ 
ing poetry. One man in eight visits the 
library every day, but one in every two vis¬ 
its a saloon. Yet the general conduct is 
good. As in every institution where no fixed 
employments are provided and where the 
minds of the inmates are not stimulated, 
there is gossip and trifiing and disputing, 
and the officers have trouble in circumvent¬ 
ing the evil suggestions of the “guard house 
lawyers,” who are malcontents that live just 
Inside the rules themselves, but put their 
comrades up to any sort of deviltry. Most 


must receive courtesy, for he has general 
oversight. The inmates are organized into 
fourteen companies, with officers appointed 
by the governor of the home. The lieuten¬ 
ants receive no pay for their service, but each 
captain draws $15 to $20 a month. The home 
police, chosen from among the men them¬ 
selves, do their duty as sternly as if they 
were dealing with strangers. Their pay is 
$12 a month. 

There is employ- 

INMATES EAGER ment at fair 
FOR EMPLOYMENT. 

sary work about the home—building, repair¬ 
ing, gardening, cooking and serving. About 
300 men have such employment, and, indeed. 


“John Jones, you are charged with refus¬ 
ing to stay in line at the canteen, and strik¬ 
ing an officer. What have y( a to say?” 

“Well, I guess I was a little forgetful, but 
next time-” 

“Next time won’t come around again for 
four months.” 

“But, sir-” 

“Pour months without canteen privileges. 
Next case. Ah, here again, are you Smith? 
What have you been doing this time? The 
officer says you were noisy and troublesome 
at the hotel yesterday. How is that?” 

“No, sir. I just went in to get a sand¬ 
wich and a bottle of beer and Rafferty, over 
there, give me a hit in the back. Naturally 
I hit him, just like any one would.” 

“I’m afraid you were not sober. Smith.” 

“As sober as I am this minute.” 

“Well, that isn’t saying a good deal. You 
look as if you had half a keg of beer In you 
still. I guess we’ll have to say three months 
on the limits.” 

After a few rapid trials of this kind an 
officer summons all who wish to see the gov¬ 
ernor, to make requests or complaints, and 
court is over for the day. If you follow the 
crowd you wdll discover that some hundreds 
wend toward a large building, rather low as 
to its roof, and they gather just outside and 
chat. If it is pension day, dozens of fakir* 
will mix with the crowd, peddling cheap trin¬ 
kets, gimcracks, pies, oranges, peanuts, or 
drawing the most awful portraits at a quarter 
apiece and commending them to the men as 
objects that will be treasured by their rela¬ 
tives so long as they live. 


KING BUILDING, NATIONAL SOLDIERS’ HOME, WASHINGTON. 


there Is more call for work than there is 
work to give. Only thirty-five civilians are 
engaged and, excepting the families of 
officials and nurses in the hospital, there are 
no women on the reservation. A board of 
managers chosen by Congress controls the 
affairs of the home, and it appoints the offi¬ 


RECKLESS CHARGE A lad in knicker¬ 
bockers steps in- 

ON THE RATIONS. to an open space 

and sounds the 
assembly. He has good lungs, and the brazen 
notes echo from every hall. The place be¬ 
comes the scene of a mighty stir, men In blue 


In a while. “I don’t like this life much,” he 
declared, “but there’s a lot of ’em it agrees 
with, fust rate. Their constitutions enable 
’em to endure a good deal of rest. Yes, it’s 
pleasant not to have to think about your rent 
and things, but—I don’t know. They feed us 
fair—pretty fair—and dress us middlin’— 
pretty middlin’—and we have a good bed— 
tolerable good bed—and they give us money 
which nine-tenths of ’em get drunk on. Look 


















30 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


shambling, limping, shuffling from all quar¬ 
ters. The long, low building is in a state of 
siege. Again the bugle, and, with a prodig¬ 
ious clatter, the hundreds surge through the 
doors and seat themselves at long tables. 
For this means supper. When all are placed, 
and have put their hats and caps into the 
racks under the table, an official calls for 
silence. 

“There will be a minstrel show at the Opera 
House to-night,” he roars. Then the clang 


free, to them. There are a mezzanine box, 
four proscenium boxes and a pew in the 
middle of the parquet for the dignitaries, 
and a few outsiders are admitted on pay¬ 
ment, but most of the house is occupied by 
the old soldiers, and it is a curious and 
pathetic sight to see them rise and salute 
the flag when it is unfurled from the stage 
before the performance. One finds orders 
posted at the doors not to spit on the floor 
or strike matches on the walls, and other 



MC CLELLAND AVENUE, NATIONAL HOME FOR DISABLED VOLUN¬ 
TEER SOLDIERS, FORT MONROE. 


of a bell is heard, and at this liberating 
sound comes an indescribable crash of 
shoes, plates, glasses, knives, forks and 
tongues. The waiters—veterans, too— 
hurry In with soup, beet, beans, bread 
and coffee, and the host is pacified. Twelve 
hundred are fed at a time in this main din¬ 
ing hall, on rations better than those supplied 
to troops in service, and if they are not 
enough—as they surely are—the man with a 
hankering can go to the canteen and have his 
beer, or can buy a lunch at the little hotel 
on the grounds. 

Except when a show is in progress at the 
opera house, also on the grounds, the men 
are supposed to conform to camp routine and 
be in their beds at taps. They ofWJn have 
good plays at this theater and admission is 


orders as to conduct and care of buildings 
and effects are to be seen on the doors and 
in the corridors of the quartets. Every man 
has a locker for his clothing and valuables, 
and he may own various things, such as 
boats and bicycles, that are not permitted 
at the Washington home. 


The farm of a hun- 

TOO FEEBLE FOR dred acres that has 


FARM WORK. 


till now been oper¬ 
ated by the veter¬ 
ans is to be given up. They have grown too 
feeble to work it successfully or profitably. 
Six hundred of them are inmates of the 
hospital, and there are a hundred more in 
the blind ward. There is no rule as to the 
distribution of clothing. The governor stands 


toward his charges much as a father to¬ 
ward his children. A man, therefore, receives 
according to his needs. When one is care¬ 
less and wasteful the fact is deplored, but 
he must be clad, just as the rough and tum¬ 
ble youth of a family must be, when he has 
been sliding down the cellar door till his 
breeches are in strings, w'hile the good and 
careful boy, who is his mother’s joy and 
speaks pieces in Sunday School, gets fewer 
garments and no cash equivalent. 

About 4,200 of the inmates are pensioners. 
Pay day is a time of dread, not only because 
of the drinking that follows, but because 
fakirs and swindlers come in with all sorts 
of claims, and extort a good deal of the cash 
from the veterans. Phoebus is a busy place 
so soon as the men have their freedom, for 
usually they are kept in for two or three 
days to encourage them to pay their bills and 
send money to their relatives. The arrests, 
numbering 1,500 a year, are all for drunken¬ 
ness. “It’s the only offense the old fellows 
can commit,” explained an official. The pun¬ 
ishments are light, the extreme being con¬ 
signment to the sweeping gang. If a particu¬ 
larly obstreperous case come whooping and 
howling in from Phoebus, and disgracing his 
family, he is locked up in the police station, 
but these quarters differ from his own mere¬ 
ly in having bars at the windows. Phoebus 
has no vice, except what is encouraged by 
the natives and the artillerymen from Fort 
Monroe, hence there are not many transient 
cases at the hospital. Furloughs are granted 
to any inmate of good character, and he is 
at liberty to leave at any time if his relatives 
offer to care for him. There is a church on 
the grounds—by no means so well built as the 
one in Dayton—and the attendance is fair, in 
spite of the blackboard at the door announc¬ 
ing a collection. As at the Washington home, 
there is a large foreign contingent. The Irish 
are said to number about a third of all the 
inmates. 

Almost every day a small procession leaves 
the home. It forms at the little undertaker 
shop, w'here one finds piles of coffins, made 
of yellow pine and stained. A hearse is fol¬ 
lowed by a firing party that plods along the 
dusty road till it reaches the cemetery. There 
Is a rattle of earth, the volley that speaks the 
last salute, another headstone is added to a 
row of portentous length, ^nd a soldier’s 
life is ended. t 















The Officer 


FTER all, it is a ques¬ 
tion of head in this 
life. And an army 
without a head Is a 
body without a mind. 
The regulars are fel¬ 
lows of infinite cour¬ 
age, and many of 
them are qualified to 
be officers them¬ 
selves, yet without 
an accepted leader 
their strength and 
courage may come to naught. And all 
things considered, the regular officer has 
been very patient under the interfer- 


more troops, and when, instead of putting 
regular officers over raw levies, the too com¬ 
mon way has been to put raw officers into 
regular service. This is preposterous and 
could happen only in a' country where the 
army has never been an important factor and 
where ignorance as to the men who make it, 
and the conditions that create and sustain it, 
are widespread. 

At the beginning of the late war with Spain 
the colonel of a Western regiment went to 
an Army'officer and said; ‘T want you for my 
lieutenant colonel. I don’t even know the 
manual of arms. I couldn't give an order to 
my men. But by being colonel I am expect¬ 
ing to land in a good place in Washington, 
and then you’ll be the real colonel of this 


war with a regular officer and declaring th*t 
the regulars had nothing to do with the sup¬ 
pression of the rebellion. The regulars—^poor 
devils—lost a heavier percentage than any 
others and got little of the glory. But the 
regular said, “You were in the war?” 

“Sure. I went in at Bull Run and came 
out with Sherman after the march to the sea.” 

“How strong was your regiment at Bull 
Run?” 

“Practically a full regiment.” 

“.\nd how many had you when you left At¬ 
lanta?” 

“Hardly a battalion.” 

“And it had learned to fight in that time?” 

“Why, sir, that battalion could have licked 
the old regiment.” 




DRESS PARADE OF CADETS AT WEST POINT. 


ences he has endured and the changes 
he has been compelled to see. The Army 
has been too often a mere stepping stone 
for advancement and eons of persons of 
influence have been foisted into place beside 
men whose worth was far in excess of theirs. 
Especially is this true in time of war, when 
tbe sudden need arises of new troops and 


regiment. See?” And it is hoped that the 
regular officer saw and saved the regiment. 

Another instructive incident: The volun¬ 
teers think very highly of volunteers, and 
with reason, for they are of the best ma¬ 
terial, but they are inclined to talk taller 
than need be. One of them was discussing 
the importance of the state levies in the civil 


“Exactly! By that time you were regu¬ 
lars.” 


And that had 

WEST POINT FINESThappened. War 


MILITARY SCHOOL. 


is learned like 
other trades, and 


is best learned in the field; but when 
a long time has passed wifiokt war to train 

























82 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER,; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


the officers, the art will be forgotten unless 
some Institution is maintained for their 
schooling. We have such an institution in 
the United States Military Academy at West 
Point. Than this there is no finer school 
In the world—that is, for its purpose. Its 
purpose is not to make poets or painters, 
but soldiers, and, when you think of it, it is 
remarkable how unanimously its graduates 
persist in being just soldiers and nothing 
else. Excepting a few who have come into 
notice as inventors, a few others who have 
written on military topics, and a few who 
backslid Into trade, it is hardly possible to 
name a graduate who has attained celebrity 
In' other than military pursuits. Of the 
thousands who have gone through the mill, 
but one—Whistler, namely—has made a 
name as an artist, and but one—General 
King—has come into notice as a writer of 
fiction. The training, therefore, is such as 
opposes what is known as culture, and en¬ 
courages hardness of body and mind, exacti¬ 
tude, self-control and practical resource. 
There is no study of the classics, little at¬ 
tention to belles lettres, no striking taste 
develops Itself for art and music, but the 
soldier that is in every man is developed to 
the full. 


Next year this academy will celebrate its 
centenary, and it ought to be allowed to 
celebrate it w’ith a generous allowance for 
new buildings and increased usefulness, for 
now that the size of our Army has been 
definitely fixed, and we are to pamper one 
soldier in luxury for every thousand mem¬ 
bers of the community that will be taxed 
for him, we must have ofBcers to command 
the soldiers or our military strength will be 
imperiled. Speaking of his trained officers, 
General Scott said: “I give it as my fixed 
opinion that but for our graduated cadets the 
war between the United States and Mexico 
might, and probably would, have lasted some 
four or five years, with, in the first half, 
more defeats than victories falling to our 
share; whereas, in less than two campaigns, 
we conquered a great country and a peace 
without the loss of a single battle or skirm¬ 
ish.” And had we possessed an army that 
was an army when the Ci%il War broke 
out, there would have been a strife of only 
a month’s duration. Considering the cost 
of war, which is the heaviest expense that 
is borne by nations, and 6onsidering the 
a'wful waste of life that comes of amateur 
leadership in its early years, the cost of 
maintenance of a school for officers is hardly 
to be considered at all. Prevention is bet¬ 
ter than cure in international disorders, as 
In other things. 


OFFICERS ARE 
MEN OF PEACE. 


And it is a mistake 
to suppose that the 
officers of the Army are 
always looking for 


fight or are eager to foment discord. Noth¬ 
ing can be farther from the fact. They know 
too well the meaning of battle; they know 
what war means to the lives and resources 
of the people, and they are the last to counsel 
against peace. At the same time, they have 
offered their lives to the service, and they 
will risk all in defense of their country. 


West Point has recently been in the public 
eye because the cadets have been under in¬ 
vestigation for hazing. The affair has been 
grotesquely exaggerated. Booz did not die 
from the effect of any injuries he received 
at the Academy. Ruffianism has been prac¬ 
tically given over, albeit some of the livelier 
youngsters want permission to continue the 
practice of "bracing," which consists in put¬ 
ting the "plebe” or new comer into ridiculous 
attitudes and making him assume the posl- 
llaa of the soldier with his chin pulled in and 


his breast thrust out like a pouter pigeon. 
It was the cadets themselves who offered to 
stop the ancient custom, and it is for their 
honor that they are held to their word, for 
while hazing is seldom serious, it is deroga¬ 
tory to .the dignity of both victims and op¬ 
pressors, and the worst is, that in order to 
carry on the practiceysecretly, there must be 
a deception, and deception is a form of lying, 
and lying is a vice that cannot be tolerated 
at W’est Point, where every fellow is on his 
honor. 

For the first thing instilled into the mind 
of the cadet is that he is to be a gentleman, 
and as such he is to have no reservations 
from the truth. He is to be frank and square 
whatever else betides. He is to bring honor 
to his calling. Needless to say he does it, for 
your reguiar Army man is a fine type, and the 
academy is a school-for no other. As a'school 
it is better furnished than almost any other of 
like purpose. The curriculum is ample, and 
the course severe. Mathematics forms the 
most pernickety part in it, but of late more 
attention has been given to practical instruc¬ 
tion. The figuring branches comprise algebra, 
geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, sur¬ 
veying, logarithmic tables, spherical and 
solid geometry, differential and integral cal¬ 
culus, the method of least squares, drawing 
exercises in which occur constructive prob¬ 
lems in plane geometry, point paths, topogra¬ 
phy, field reconnoissance contouring, triangu¬ 
lation and large surveys, topographical 
sketching, photography as applied to surveys, 
mechanical and architectural drawing, mili¬ 
tary landscape, building construction, iso¬ 
metric sections, engineering and ordnance 
drawing, and calculation of speed and 
strength in gunnery. There is a course in 
English, and one must also learn French and 
Spanish, after a fashion. 

CADETS MUST As for other things that 

old fashioned warriors 

LEARN MUCH. would have deemed un¬ 
necessary, there are nat¬ 
ural and experimental philosophy, chemistry, 
chemical and physical geography, mineralogy, 
history, law, things about electricity, sound 
and light, and, of course, all likely things 
about Army work, drill, discipline, tactics, or¬ 
ganization, engineering, signaling, gunnery, 
fortification, camps, sanitation and various 
matters imparted, if not in books, then in lec¬ 
tures. It makes you catch your breath to see 
a youngster who, a few months before, did not 
know the difference between doiomite and a 
theodolite, march up to a tray of minerals 
and pick out actinolite, gypsum, hornblende 
or what not, and tell what its physicai and 
chemical properties and economic conse¬ 
quence may be, if it has any. What does 
a lieutenant need to know about such? Well, 
for one thing, he may be sent into strange 
countries to make surveys, and if he does not 
know one plant or mineral from another, he 
may tramp across acres of vegetation or hills 
of mineral of great importance to the indus¬ 
tries or development of the country, and re¬ 
port the land as valueless. While the book 
■work is hard, and there is little let up in it 
through the four academic years, practical in¬ 
struction is also constant. The cadet is 
drilled in every branch. He is an infantry¬ 
man, a cavalryman, an artilleryman, an en¬ 
gineer; he can box, fence, shoot wdth re¬ 
volvers or machine guns; he can throw up 
intrenchments, he can make spar, pontoon 
and trestle bridges, he can construct earth or 
masonry w'ork and obstacles, he can tell 
where he is by the stars, he can ride a horse 
and care for him w'hen he—the horse—is play¬ 
ing off with some of his various diseases, he 
can and does scour about the country on prac¬ 
tice marches, when he is arrayed in a cam¬ 


paign hat and leggins, and wears a business 
look that would shock the martinets of a for¬ 
mer era, and he comes back with maps and 
surveys and drawings. Also, he whirls 
arpund the horizontal bar, swims, rows, fights 
his classmates, in the woods after dark; eats 
iike a pirate, gets tired of it all and wishes 
he were practicing medicine or keeping a gro¬ 
cery; but he plugs along with a stiff back and 
his chin in the air, and one afternoon he re¬ 
ceives his sheepskin, roils up his gray cadet 
uniform, blossoms out in blue and gold and is 
the largest man in the United States, for a 
few weeks. 


WHEN THE CADET 
SHOWS OFF. 


If you go to West 
Point, as you 
should, being an 
American and in¬ 


terested and responsible, be there during the 
June examinations, if you. can squeeze into 
the musty, obsolete hotel, for it is then that 
the cadets show off. You will see them as 
infantry one day; you will see them tear by 
like a cyclone on the next, as they make a 
cavalry charge; you find them bridging the 
Hudson with floats; your nerves will stand a 
jar on the afternoons when they train the 
siege guns at a whitened rock on the side of 
Crow Nest, a mile or two away, and pound 
off slabs and clouds of it; you will see some 
beautiful mortar play in the evening, when, 
in addition to the usual projectiles, some of 
the ordnance coughs out fireworks; you will 
see exciting sham battles, and you will see 
dress parades that are wonders of steadi¬ 
ness; and the band of forty-five pieces, the 
best in the Army, will play, and the roll of 
drums and clangor of bugles and crash of 
the sunset gun as Old Glory descends from 
Its height and every man not in the ranks 
uncovers and every woman rises, will stir 
your blood, so surely as you have any. 

After the examinations the cadets go into 
camp and they used to hold high jinks in the 
evening, but there is less of that now. For¬ 
mer visitors to the place will learn with re¬ 
gret of the shoveling down of Fort Clinton, 
in which some of these jinks were held, and 
that was one of the interesting historical rel¬ 
ics about the place, but the removal of the big 
earthwor’w built by Kosciusko, was necessary, 
because if.e plain was too small for the camp. 
There will now be room, for the first time. 
Old Fort Putnam still overhangs the post on 
its eminence—a ruin that is much visited for 
the view it offers, but that is also of interest 
because it represents a type of defensive 
structure that is as far out of date as Kenil¬ 
worth Castle. History is all about us. This 
was the scene of Arnold’s treason. Here the 
chain, of which some links are to be seen, 
was stretched across the Hudson to forbid 
the passage of the British fleet. On Beacon 
Hill, across the river, the fires were lighted 
as warning or as jubilation. 

Legend still abides, for it was on Crow 
Nest that the last revel of the elves was held, 
and through that gap of wondrous beauty, 
that the river cleaves into a land of dreams 
and sunshine in the north, the distant Cats¬ 
kills are to be seen, and you think of Rip 
Van Winkle and the Indian storm makers. 

One of the adornments of the grounds is 
the battle monument, surmounted by the 
Winged Victory of Macmonnies, and there are 
many trophies of success in foreign wars, es¬ 
pecially in the form of cannon taken from 
the English and Mexicans, the latter oddlv 
titled in such fashions as The Clown, Tli .■ 
Peacemaker, The Thunderer, The Peacock, 
or Saint This or That. Romantic glades in 
the vicinity are traversed by inviting paths, 
and the one known as Flirtation explains it- 
selL Then there is the little cemetery wher4 


« 


i 








THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


33 



WEST POINT’S 
WONDROUS CHARM. 


Mst Thayer, the father of the academy: 
Scott, Anderson, Custer, Kilpatrick and other 
famous men of famous wars. In brief, the 
scenery and associations of the place are 
such as to arouse and perpetuate love ol 
country. 

The charm of It 
comes to every 
visitor, and the 
wonder Is that 
Its graduates are not even more enthusias¬ 
tic than they are. The surface of the Point 
Is a green plain, where the parades take 
place; along the roads are the pretty cot¬ 
tages of the officers and teachers, half hid¬ 
den In foliage, and at the foot of the bluff, 
on the north side, are the barracks and shops 
pertaining to the garrison; for all branches 
of the service are represented here. The 
cadet barracks are an imposing castellated 
mass of buildings and near by are the chapel, 
the Catholic church, the gymnasium, bath 


assumes acquaintance with the grammar 
school branches. His allowance from gov¬ 
ernment is $540 a year, or about $70 a year 
less than the naval cadet receives, and this 
difference is a cause of some heart aches and 
a few stomach aches. Out of this the lad is 
clothed and fed and taught and lectured and 
supplied with books and instruments and 
clean collars, and by strict attention to the 
matter he generally succeeds in leaving the 
academy a hundred dollars in debt. 

GAMBLING NOT On achieving 

h i s lieuten- 

FASHIONABLE NOW. ancy he begins 

to earn enough 
to preserve him from trouble, but he must 
pay for his clothes and trappings. He has 
his quarters, however, and medical service, 
and if he is sent away from his post on 
special duty he has an allowance for rent, 
but as this is only $12 a month per room. 


officers as poker for nickels and beans is 
common among the enlisted men to-day. 
And this more virtuous existence has come 
in spite of a bettering of the lot of the offi¬ 
cer. It has come simply because it is no 
longer the part of a gentleman to gamble. 

The pay of our officers has almost doubled 
in the last sixty years, and the maximum 
is now as follows: Lieutenant, unmounted, 
$2,100; lieutenant, mounted, $2,240; captain, 
$2,520; captain mounted, $2,800; major, $3,- 
500; lieutenant colonel, $4,000; colonel, $4,- 
500; brigadier general, $5,500; major general, 
$7,500. It has been feared, by some critics, 
that these sums are too large; that they 
are liable to make the soldiers worldly, and 
encourage them in luxurious ways that will 
soften them and make them easy to beat 


PRACTISE battery at WEST POINT. 


and swimming house, library, mess hall, hos¬ 
pital, store, observatory, and the handsome 
memorial building stored with battle flags, 
trophy guns and portraits, and containing an 
assembly room and theater. The academy 
building, contiguous to the barracks, holds 
the admirably fitted class rooms and the ord¬ 
nance museum, besides art, mineral and geo¬ 
logical collections. Drills occur on the par¬ 
ade ground, and if one were not in time, on 
a flying visit, to see the work of the cadets, 
he could probably come upon the regular 
troops going through their work. A seacoast 
battery, siege battery, light battery, salut¬ 
ing battery, rifle and pistol range are places 
of diabolical activity on certain days, and 
dashing exhibitions of horsemanship occur 
In the riding hall. 

When the academy was founded, ninety- 
nine years ago, no examinations were neces¬ 
sary for entrance. The cadets studied during 
the summer and went home for the winter. 
Mow the youngsters remain there for the 
whole four years, except during a fortnight 
In the second term. One cadet may be ap¬ 
pointed from each congressional district, one 
from the District of Columbia, one from each 
territory and twenty are appointed at large 
by the President By recent increases a 
maximum of 511 members of the corps is 
possible, and with our Army this is but a 
moderate allowance. When we had 2o,000 
men, cadets were sometimes kept waiting, 
and promotions were slow, but with 80,000 a 
force of lieutenants adequate to command it 
must be provided. 

The candidate must be between the ages 
of 17 and 22, must have sound health, no wife, 
tolerable morals and a clear head. His 
■cholastic examination is not strict, but it 


it does not permit him to put up at the 
Waldorf, hence he draws on his own re¬ 
sources, and he does this constantly so long 
as he is in the Army. If he continues to be 
a bachelor he is lodged in any sort of place 
that is not needed for the married men, 
although government is kinder to bachelors 
than It used to be, and in some posts it is 
putting up really respectable lodgings for 
them. Then, unless the garrison is cut to 
a mere skeleton, he clubs in with the other 
bachelor officers, and they live tolerably 
well, though he often has to rough it on 
salt horse and hard tack, when he is on 
service in the West. He is a more cautious 
man with his morals than he used to be, 
and it is an exception now to find an officer 
who tipples, or consorts with gay and frivo¬ 
lous persons, or gambles. Gambling thirty 
or forty years ago was a.s common among 


in the case of war. The likelier misfortune 
is that they will become prizes better worth 
trying for, and that in case of another war 
they will be more eagerly sought than ever 
before, by politicians and other public 
charges. In addition to their pay, officers 
receive free transportation when on govern¬ 
ment duty, and in certain positions, as when 
they serve as aides, they receive a small 
extra compensation. Retired officers con¬ 
tinue to draw 75 per cent, of their pay. 

As a rule, the West Pointer tries for the 
engineer corps. That is the aristocracy of 
the Army. If he cannot have a place in 
that, and is of varying minds regarding the 
other branches, he may elect the ordnance, 
a responsible, but not glory-giving depart¬ 
ment, for the ordnance division is merely 
constructive, the fighting of the guns being 
left to the artillery. If these serviem ar« 


























THE AMERICAN SOLDIER; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 



< . COLOR > 
GOARD AT 
WEST ; 

X point/ 


'cadets TRV their hands at con 

,5TRUCT/NG INTRENCHME/VT3 IN A HUPC 


Impossible, and if comfortable staff positions 
do not offer, the young olBcer must content 
himself in one of the old reliable branches: 
the artillery, cavalry or infantry. Usually 
he is dreaded, in the post where he makes 
his first appearance. All branches of the 
service are represented at West Point, yet 
he has had no chance to head a troop or com¬ 
pany or battery, and in the know-it-all age, 
one may be a bit of a nuisance. The trust 
imposed by the government of the United 
States in the young lieutenant swells him a 
good deal, and his shoes are not easy, nor 
his hat small enough for some months. He 


men of their own sort, with whom they 
tramped about the floors of city armories. 
Men like a commander whom they trust, 
whether he is a friend or a boss, and they 
realize that they are safest under him. 

It is rather 

ESCAPE NOSTALGIA melancholy at 

.......... Iirvaiir-rk Arst thought 

BY HAVING NO HOMES. oscer 

in the United States Army has so limited a 
range of acQuaintance, and is so little known 
outside of his department. He is shifted 
from New York to Manila, and from there 
to San Juan, and thence to the Western 
desert. These rapid changes are disorganiz¬ 
ing to the enlisted men, and they are some¬ 
times so home sick that they have to be re¬ 
leased from the service, as invalids, but the 
officer ceases to be the citizen of a state; 


of good eating and drinking, good dressing 
and plenty of society. If he does not care 
for these things it often happens that his 
wife and children do. 

But the officer is never secure in any po¬ 
sition. Politics are not so important in the 
Army, nor does “pull” count for half so much 
as many old soldiers believe. Pride and jeal¬ 
ousy are failings of the Army man, so far as 
he permits himself to have failings, but often 
there is smell occasion for the jealousy. His 
bitterest experience comes to him when he 
has to take the responsibility for failures and 
when the custom of the service nermits him 
to make no reply or explanation. When bat¬ 
tle is on there is, indeed, no time or chance 
for either, and the younger officer must swal¬ 
low slights and demand redress afterward. 
For example, when a regiment with the un¬ 


lucky number of 13 arrived in Luzon, there 
was fighting with the rebels. It had no time 
to get on its land legs, to get used to the 
climate, to dress for the heat, or adapt it¬ 
self to new conditions; no time even to eat; 
it was rushed directly from the transport to 
the front. As a result 600 of the men fell 
out, overcome with heat. Instead of receiv¬ 
ing consideration the general in command 
shouted: “Send these men back to Manila 
for guard duty, where they won’t be hurt.” 

Thus a stigma wms put upon a regiment 
that was as brave as any, and under different 
circumstances could give a different account 
of itself. And in such a case the regimental 
officers suffer as badly as the , men in body, 
and ten times worse in mind. For the officer 
is the mind of his command and to criticlM 
his command is to declare him ineffective. 


almost invariably reforms, however, and when 
his greenness wears away his men respect 
him. There are few tyrants in our Army; 
few men who would be fired at by their own 
troops in battle or in drill. It is alleged that 
one unpopular officer found three bullet holes 
In his hat after a battle drill, but this sort 
of thing oftener happens among volunteers 
than among regulars, for the former are apt 
to regard their leaders without reverence, 
*nd to envy them, having been but lately 


he represents the whole nation, and he has 
given his life to its defense. Home he hard¬ 
ly knows; therefore, he cannot be homesick. 
To be sure, he has the best there is at the 
fort or station to which he is assigned, but 
that is commonly nothing for him or his gov¬ 
ernment to brag about; and he is happy, if 
he is some usual kind of man, to obtain a 
place in Washington or New York where his 
income permits him to be as good as most 
other folks and where he has the consolations 


War is a rough business at the best, and all 
the trials of it are not trials of health, 
strength and endurance. It calls for the ut¬ 
most development of manhood and in all th* 
tests it has imposed on our countrymen they 
have borne themselves to admiration. Th« 
American officer needs no other title than hit 
name of officer to be recognized as the knight 
of the republic, without fear and without 
proach. 




1 




















Military Prisons and Schools 



pofst graduate school for ofRcers of cavalry 
and Infantry; not far away is a populous 
home for old soldiers, and here are likewise 
exemplified the customary employments of 
the man at arms. There is no complaint 
as to lack of room. The reservation 
covers 5,500 acres in Kansas, reaches across 
the Missouri River and embraces 930 acres 
more in the State of Missouri, and contains 
not only the expected houses, barracks and 
shops, but a reach of swamp and woodland 
on the lonesome or eastern side, ample 
ground for grazing, and will presently in¬ 
clude one of the best ranges In the world, 
not only for rifle practice, but for artillery. 
The district is rolling and broken, gullied 
by brooks, and has a considerable forest 
growth, so that in the event of practice 
marches nearly all desirable difficulties can 
be confronted without going far afield. For 
the practice tramps that used to be taken 
by our men in the days when they had no 
w'ar on their hands were extensive. It was 
generally expected of an infantry command 
that it would cover 300 miles during the 
year, and a common practice was to march 
from a fort In one state to a post in another, 
remain for awhile, and return. If there was 
no other post for hundreds of miles, the 
command W'ould go into camp. 

The scenery about Fort Leavenworth, 
while not exciting, is agreeable, the social 


N the thirsty soil of 
Kansas, twenty-six 
miles from the cock¬ 
tails of Kansas City 
and three miles from 
the town of Leaven- 
w'orth, which is the 
stillest place of its 
size in the United 
States, except when 
it is burning negroes, 
stands Fort Leaven¬ 
worth. This post is the largest, most Im¬ 
portant and most various military station in 
the country. By reason of its central loca- 


and everything wears a look of use and 
thrift, different from the desolation or down- 
at-the-heels aspect of a majority of the 
Army stations in the West. Fort Leaven¬ 
worth was made for a large garrison and, 
although temporarily occupied by only a cou¬ 
ple of companies, it will be one of the first 
of the forts to regain its complement, so 
soon as China is left to her own devices and 
the Filipinos desist from kicking against the 
pricks. 

No other station in the country has such 
diversity of Interests as this. Here are 
separate systems of punishment for three 
classes of military offenders; here Is the 


INSPECTION IN THE PRISON YABD. 


tlon it will always be of consequence as a 
distributing point, if for no other cause. 
Any of our cities could be reached from 
Fort Leavenworth in three days, at least by 
special train, and the railroad lines that 
center in Kansas City give quick reach to 
every part of our territory. This is what 
led to the establishment of so large a fort 
at this place, but it was the addition of the 
Army prison and the officers’ school that 
made it notable. 

The post is better kept than ordinary, be¬ 
cause it is better manned, and it is not as 
likely to lose its garrison as are the smaller 
forts. The barracks are of brick, Avlth dou¬ 
ble piazzas; the married officers’ quarters 
are two and one-half story houses, also of 
brick, fronting on a pretty park, w'hich con¬ 
tains trophy guns and a bronze statue of 
General Grant; the bachelor officers live in 
neat brick rows, instead of the neglected 
shacks to which their deplorable state of 
singleness so often consigns them; there is 
a spacious parade ground, with a battery of 
brass Napoleons that shine like new cents. 




























86 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 







7 -ishepman; hall. 

VFgRTJCEAVENWOfilrf 




. -vv. 


e ^ CONVICTS 

THEI« WAY 
'TO THEIR CELUS 
after A DAY'S 

Work 3>' 


advantages surpass those of a majority of 
posta, no hardships are to be looked for in 
the performance of routine duty, the quar¬ 
ters are spacious and comfortable; yet an 
Army man shudders at the name of Leaven¬ 
worth, for it is hopelessly associated with 
prison and arithmetic. The torturing devices 
Implied in the last mentioned science are a 
part of the work in the officers’ school. Here 
the young lieutenant must come for the fin¬ 
ishing touches to his education. Touches? 


against Spaniards and Indians, or filled the 
place of post adjutant or regimental quar¬ 
termaster, and it is no refiection on his cour¬ 
age or his fitness when he is ordered to this 
place or to Fort Reilly, where a similar 
school is in operation when there is time 
for schools, to complete his studies. To a 
man who has not had the advantage of a 
scholastic training, and is, therefore, unac¬ 
customed to mental application, the strain 
of a term at the infantry and cavalry school 


he can pass subsequent examinations after 
private study; but the brand of the defective 
is upon him, and he feels it. 

The regular course occupies two years, and 
it is designed that a period of time shall 
elapse between graduation from West Point 
and the return to the books. The lads at 
the national military academy are too young 
and too busy to advantage by such a school 
as that in Fort Leavenworth. One reason 
for maintaining a large garrison here—com¬ 
monly a regiment—is that the scholars may 
have troops at hand to supply the means of 
practical work. The commander of the post 
is the head of the school, and he makes all 
needed requisitions for material, such as 
guns, engineer euppliee and the like. Classes 
meet in Sherman Hall, a sober old building 
at a little distance from the barracks. It 
contains a museum, a library of 10,000 vol¬ 
umes on military topics, maps, laboratories 
and recitation rooms. The term extends from 


Yes, large, heavy strokes. West Point pro¬ 
duces officers of whom we may be proud, yet 
they have much to learn that can be ac¬ 
quired only in practice. They are attending 
the best schools in Cuba and the Philippines 
at this moment. Because of the increase in 
the Army and the dispersal of its officers 
over two hemispheres there is an Increasing 
number of men who hold commissions with¬ 
out having been through the course at West 
Point. They are civilian appointees, men pro¬ 
moted into the regular service from the vol¬ 
unteers, privates who have studied their way 
up from the ranks. Take no scorn of these 
honest and deserving fellows. Some of the 
ablest officers in the Army have never spent 
a day at West Point, and the present gen- 
oral carried a gun in his youth. 

It is odd to figure a man w'ith shoulder 
^rape, sitting at a desk and doing sums or 
trying to square the circle or encircle the 
•qtiare, after he has served with distinction 


is considerable, and it is a matter of honor 
as w'ell as of duty to go through with as 
good a record as circumstances permit; for 
the man who cannot pass his examinations 
Is accounted a dullard, and suffers unde’* a 
slight disgrace. There is a stimulus as well 
ae a deterrent in this fact, and when the 
civilian appointee finds himself elbow to 
elbow with the West Point graduate he will 
study the harder, in order to maintain his 
standing. Regimental commanders make the 
details for study, with the sanction of the 
War Department, not more than two men at 
a time being assigned from a single regiment, 
and none above the grade of lieutenant. Ex¬ 
aminations are held every six months. If at 
the end of that time a lieutenant fails to 
pass he is allowed to study for six months 
longer; if at the end of that extension he is 
still unable to make a good showing he is re. 
turned to his regiment, his place unim- 
perlled; he is still eligible for promotion If 


September to the middle of May, with daily 
recitations except on Saturday, Sunday and 
holidays. 

Each unsatisfactory recitation calls for a 
written explanation to the commandant, and 
this is also required for lateness and negli¬ 
gence. Lectures and exercises supplement 
the study from books, and all examinations 
are written. The marks range from 0 for 
complete failure to 3 for perfect, but the 
student does not depend wholly on his work 
In the class room. His percentages can be 
advanced by showing merit in his essays, 
map making, ability to handle troops in the 
field, sharpness of observation that notices 
needs and merits, and the ability to bear 
himself as a soldier. Less than 70 per cent, 
is accounted as unsatisfactory, and above 
that one Is graded as proficient or distin¬ 
guished. The diploma granted at the end 
of the course releases the officer from ex¬ 
aminations for five years to come. The five 
men who r^nk the highest in their studies 
are "honor graduates.” 

The study is thorough. It comprises grand 
and minor tactics, army organization, field 
exercises, theoretic and practical; rifle fire, 
hlppology, drill regulations, courses in strat¬ 
egy, logistics, military history, military ge¬ 
ography, war games and maneuvers on the 
map, military topography and sketching, field 
fortification, field engineering, signaling, te¬ 
legraphy and photography; law, military ad¬ 
ministration and military hygiene. These 
merely generalize the work, for In the ds- 









































































THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


37 







' lUNITEO STATES 
PENITENTIARY.SCEME 
IN ■!>« PRISON VARD 
ON CHRISTMAS DAY 


partment of hygiene alone there ar© Included 
such matters as the selection of recruits, 
clothing, food, barracks, hospitals, sites for 
camps and buildings, soils, dampness, water 
supply, building materials, -ventilation, floors, 
air space, heating, camps, bivouacs, marches, 
cleanliness, exercise, amusements, waste dis¬ 
posal, drainage, sewers, plumbing, tests for 
leakage, tests for purity in water and ice, 
preventable diseases and precautions. 

Until the outbreak of the Spanish War the 
graduating classes at Fort Leavenworth 
ranged from 60 to 100, and In Fort Reilly 
the classes were nearly as large. At pres¬ 
ent there is such urgent need of ofllcers that 
there is no time for sending them to school, 
and a.few of them are not sorry for this, 
although the earnest student finds Leaven¬ 
worth a pleasant place to be in. There is 
a good post library of 2,000 books, aside 


reservation were turned over by the War 
Department to the Department of Justice, 
some time ago, and on this hundred acres 
stands the prison, which was formerly oc¬ 
cupied solely by military offenders. It is 
but a stone’s throw from the barracks. When 
the model penitentiary that is in process of 
construction, two and one-half miles away, 
has been completed, the present inadequate 
and antiquated building will come down and 
the land will revert to the War Department, 
the Department of Justice taking, however, 
a new hold on 700 acres about the new prison. 

Nothing better illustrates the fact that the 
Army is a little world by itself than the ex¬ 
tensive provision of its punishments. It has 
rewards for courage and address, and 
penalties for slinking and weakness of which 
the world knows little or nothing. As else¬ 
where, the penalties are surer than the re- 


will Impose a fine on him of, say, $5. If 
the same soldier strikes a fledgling from 
W’est Point he can be put to death. Yet the 
fledgling can strike him. 

The officer can and does have on his side¬ 
board and his table such wine and liquors 
as he pleases, but the enlisted man is not 
permitted even to have beer. When the en¬ 
listed man kicks over the traces and gets 
drunk he is sent to the guard house for a 
week. If an officer forgets himself his 
colonel orders him to stay home till he 
feels better. There are many of these re¬ 
minders to the enlisted man that he is a 
social and moral inferior, which generally 
he is not. This imposition of extravagant 
punishments upon him is a relic of the dark 
ages when the soldier was the vassal, the 
slave of the robber baron. Our military law 
is an Importation from other lands, and is 
not always founded on sense or justice. Does 
any one suppose, for an Instant, that if the 
erime of slapping an officer on the wrist 
were punishable with a month’s imprison¬ 
ment at hard labor, instead of death, the 
soldiers would hurry out of barracks and slap 
their officers? 

Punishment has. Indeed, been modified, ex¬ 
cept in time of war, when there is some ex¬ 
cuse for severity, and one no longer sees 
the exhibitions of cruelty and humiliation 
that were common in the camps and forts not 
forty years ago. Men were compelled to 
straddle rails and wooden horses, for In¬ 
stance, and carry logs of wood up and down 
the streets of a camp, and sit on the ground 
with their arms trussed under their legs, and 
be subject to the guying and insults of their 


Tt\el;PO•^TlPPlJo^J, 

roPTTEAVLNWORTI 


from the Horary of the school, and the offi¬ 
cers have a club. The enlisted men had their 
club, also, till the abstainers broke It up, 
under the impression that it was a bar¬ 
room. Pope Hall, where dances and popular 
assemblies are held. Is one of the handsom¬ 
est and largest buildings to be found in any 
military post in this country. There the 
officers meet the families not only of their 
station, but those of important citizens in 
adjacent towns. The enlisted men lost their 
little restaurant and store when the canteen 
was destroyed. They are at liberty to at¬ 
tend prayer meetings. There is a post chapel, 
originally Intended for all religious services, 
but In addition to this the Catholics have 
erected a chapel on the grounds, with the 
consent of the government. 

W’hen the Improvements now In progress 
are completed Fort Leavenworth will accom¬ 
modate 2,000 men, and It will be complete in 
all departments, even to a siege battery, 
which, of course, has no practical value as a 
defense, since the ships of no European navy 
will ever ride up the Missouri to this point. 
The prisoners in the adjacent penitentiary 
are at present busied in building a new prison 
f<n* themselves, but hundreds of them will 
presently be put at work converting the mili¬ 
tary reservation Into a great park. 

The grim gray building Inclosed in a high 
wall and watched by men with carbines and 
shot guns are what has made Leavenworth 
better if less pleasantly known than any 
Other fixture. About a hundred acres of the 




wards, and the ethics of them are often hard 
for the civilian to understand, or for the sol¬ 
dier, either. A civilian, on good pay in gov¬ 
ernment employ, or any other, may throw 
up his work whenever he pleases, but let 
a soldier leave his job and straightway he 
is tried by a jury of his superiors and sent 
to prison, or even ordered to be shot. An 
officer may resign with honor, though thou¬ 
sands of government money have-been spent 
upon him, “And why not I?” asks the Files, 
In the ranks. A soldier may strike the Pres¬ 
ident of the United States and a police judge 


comrades and the contumely of vlsitorfl. 
There is none of that at present, and it 
should have gone out when the stocks and 
pillory disappeared. The punishments now 
are practically all imprisonments. 

The guard house, which Is found in every 
post, and in camp is represented by a tent, 
is for minor offenders, who, for Instance, 
have overstayed their time on a pass to town, 
or have taken more than is good for them, 
or have asked questions or grumbled when 
told to do something, or have persisted In « 
slouchy attitude and inattention at drill. FoV, 

































THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


r 88 


these sins they are condemned to lose their 
liberty for a day, a week, a month, as the 
case may be. 

The post prison which occupies the floor 
above the guard house in Fort Leavenworth 
is also for military offenders, such as desert¬ 
ers and mutineers, all of whom have been sen¬ 
tenced by courts martiaJ—none of them by 
civil courts. In this post they occupy a cage 
about 50 feet by 60, containing cots and a 
stove and a pet dog. They are sentenced to 
hard labor about the post with cellular con¬ 
finement at night, and are held for longer 
terms than the guard house contingent, and 
may be kept from their liberty for years; yet 
they have not ceased to be soldiers. These 
men are commonly employed under watch of 
an armed guard, in digging, hauling, road 
mending, filling sinks and the like. They re¬ 
ceive the regular Army rations and are 
dressed in cast off uniforms with a number 
attached to each and the letter P, denoting 
prisoner, on their backs. For these men 
there is a row of dark cells, and they are 
thrown into them at once if they are refrac¬ 
tory. The cells are not only dark, but they 
have no heat, and as a bread and water diet 
is also Imposed on the occupant there is no 
reason why he should not correct his be¬ 
havior at mere mention of such a place. There 
are a dozen posts that have prisons of this 
Bort—commonly cages of steel bar or gas 
pipe—that are watched all day and night by 
armed guards. 

The third and worst class in the Army goes 
neither to the guard house nor the post prison, 
but to the United States penitentiary, and 
v;hen he has entered it the convict not only 
begins a term of punishment, but has ceased 
to be a soldier, for the court martial that 
fixed his sentence has dishonorably dismissed 
him from the service. Originally the peni¬ 
tentiary at Leavenworth was for soldiers 
who had broken the law, but since its en¬ 
largement as a government prison all sorts 
of people are received there, who have fallen 
under the displeasure of the federal authori¬ 
ties—bad Indians, mail robbers, counterfeit¬ 
ers, sellers of whisky on forbidden reserva¬ 
tions, moonshiners and men who have be¬ 
trayed trusts imposed on them by the general 
government. A soldier or a sailor, however, 
can be sent here for having violated the law 
of any state or territory, and he can be sent 
by a civil court as well as by court martial. 
If he has robbed or outraged or set fire to 
houses or committed murder or felonious as¬ 
sault he comes here to expiate his offense. 
Of about 750 prisoners only 55 are soldiers. 
Of these 38 are white and 17 colored. 

The present w'arden of the penitentiary is 
a man of experience. Major McClaughry was 
in charge of a reformatory in Pennsylvania, 
in charge at Joliet and was chief of police in 
Chicago during one of the virtuous seasons 
in that town. He is of middle age, a man of 
sympathy as w'ell as understanding—and un¬ 
less a man has a soft side he is eminently 
unfit for place as head of a penal institu¬ 
tion. He holds that the prison is too large, 
for a keeper should know his men. In his 
opinion no prison should have more than 600 
Inmates. He is also hampered to some de¬ 
gree by the antiquity of the place, for it was 
not intended as a prison. It is merely a group 
of old houses that were Intended for quarter¬ 
master stores. To guard and watch buildings 
of that sort is difiicult, requiring not only 
greater vigilance, but more men, and there¬ 
fore a larger expense, than is the case in the 
Philadelphia penitentiary, for instance, 
where all the corridors are under the eye of 
a single watchman, standing in the central 
rotunda. 

The age and unsuitability of the construc¬ 


tion has necessitated some architectural 
freaks. The dark cells that remain from the 
military period are constructed in a double 
row in the middle of a long, bleak room, and 
resemble, distantly, a bank of ovens. They 
are strongly built, but wretchedly small, and 
totally dark. The doors are of two thick¬ 
nesses of wood, and, in order that not a ray 
of light shall enter, the gimlet holes that 
provide ventilation are bored at points in 
the outer wood that do not match those in 
the inner. “Isn’t that like the Army?” asked 
an official, with a look of scorn. 

These absurd and torturing places are to 
be destroyed, and already some cells have 
been erected that are an improvement on 
them. They are larger, they have ventila¬ 
tion, and are dark enough without being ab¬ 
solutely black. There are also a few cells 
for incorrigibles and lunatics, who are not 
safe to be at large in the yards. The usual 
quarters form rows <n the old storehouses 
and are cages rather than cells. There is 
a gain in this, in that there is better ven¬ 
tilation and more light, and the stone and 
steel construction allow small chance for the 
lodgment of vermin, but communication be¬ 
tween the prisoners is made easy, and there 
is not the privacy that is believed to have 
its reformatory value. The convicts always 
have single beds when that is possible, but 
there are times when it is necessary to double 
up. On Saturdays there is a general over¬ 
hauling of the prison, and every convict 
brings his outfit into the corridors, in order 
that it may be inspected. This makes it 
hard for a man to conceal forbidden things 
about his premises, and it also enables him 
to thoroughly clean his cell. 

In other prisons, there is at times a diffi¬ 
culty in providing work enough, and the right 
kind of work, but there seems to be busi¬ 
ness enough here. When no work is done 
the men who would be otherwise idle are 
marched about the yards for thirty minutes 
every day. Convicts that have attempted to 
escape are put into stripes, instead of the 
gray-blue, numbered dress of the majority, 
and are therefore conspicuous in these par¬ 
ades. Twenty of the sixty guards accompany 
the working party every day to the site of 
the new penitentiary. There are 400 convicts 
in that company, and they walk five miles 
a day in addition to quarrying and breaking 
and laying stone. The brick needed for the 
construction is made on the premises. Other 
men cultivate a farm and garden of 600 acres 
(raising nothing for sale), and numbers are 
engaged in the machine shop, laundry, baker¬ 
ies and hospital. The hospital is in a long, 
low building, apart from the prisons, though 
in the same inclosure. A conspicuous in¬ 
mate at present—he is a nurse, not a patient 
—is Captain Carter, the engineer officer ac¬ 
cused of stealing a million dollars from the 
government. He is a well behaved prisoner, 
but is a source of trouble to the keepers, be¬ 
cause he is constantly besought by lawyers 
who want a part of that million, and are 
fertile in excuses to see and consult with 
him. No military officer ever sees or ever 
mentions him. 

Military prisoners are accounted as the 
best who are received here, because they 
have learned the lesson of obedience. In their 
nature, how'ever, they are like the others— 
childish and undeveloped. Nine in ten of 
the men w'ho go to Leavenworth have never 
been taught to use their hands, and not many 
of them use their brains hard, either. It is 
the ignorant and passionate who make the 
most trouble. The few men of education 
who are put behind the bars are afflictive 
only because they are nervous when the 


key is turned upon them, and they ask for 
special favors and employments, for that 
reason. In some prisons no concession is 
made to this class, but if they are greatly 
depressed or excited Major McClaughry puts 
them into the hospital, where they have more 
range, and may consign them to the room 
set apart for subjects of insomnia. It is 
the most brutal who worry the least at the 
restraints of imprisonment. The Indians 
are in general a well behaved and obedient 
company, and are learning to lay brick and 
cut stone. Punishments are administered in 
less than 10 per cent, of the cases, and cor¬ 
poral punishment has been forbidden in all 
United States prisons. The dark cell, bread 
and water diet, and chaining the wrists to the 
cell door are the only corrections. 

There is so much out-of-door work that 
the health of the prisoners is excellent. They 
have the brown and ruddy faces of soldiers, 
rather than the usual bleached and sallow 
look of convicts, and are no more “tough” 
In their appearance than the average of the 
laboring class. They are more alert and 
brighter in their manner also by reason of 
their open air employments. Not many at¬ 
tempts aro made to get away, because the 
guards are numerous and there is a mur¬ 
derous looking arsenal at the gate. The 
only time when the guards exhibit anxiety 
is when a fog is coming on, during the 
march to or from the new prison. When 
there are signs of darkness the convicts see 
gleams of light and they are hurried back 
to quarters almost at a run. The guards 
carry carbines, shotguns, revolvers and stout 
canes that end in a round hook. The object 
of the unusual curve in the handle is to se¬ 
cure it to the arm when it is not carried in 
the hand, for several officers have been hurt 
or killed by mutinous convicts who succeed¬ 
ed in getting sticks away from them. 

There is a continuance of military system 
in the prison. The bugle still calls to rise 
and work and eat and rest, and the Army 
ration is served on the tables. Indeed, one 
official declares that the criminals live bet¬ 
ter than the enlisted men, now that there is 
no longer a canteen fund to draw upon for 
extras. The meat supply is about the same 
in quantity and quality as in barracks, the 
bread supply Is good and without limit, and, 
as in the ranks, there is abundance of good 
coffee, but no tea. Vegetables from the 
prison farm are served in their season and 
there is special diet for the sick. Some of 
the men show a desire for reformation and 
improvement and for such a school is to be 
established in the new penitentiary, where 
tbey w'ill also have larger cells, the measure¬ 
ments being ten feet by five, and eight in 
height. 

Prisoners at Leavenworth are allowed to 
wear mustaches and beards, if they choose, 
and their hair is not kept very short. They 
can receive letters at any time, and are al¬ 
lowed to write to their relatives once in two 
weeks. On Saturday the warden holds a lit¬ 
tle court when he receives thirty or forty 
requests and complaints from the prisoners, 
or from their friends. Odd and interesting 
some of these requests are. Here is a man 
who asks the privilege of writing an extra 
letter. Here is another who has not heard 
from his wife in months, and he wants the 
warden to write to her and assure her that 
he is well. Here is a man who had |2 when 
committed and he wishes to send it to his 
family. Here is a negro who has been 
thumped on the head by a white brother who 
didn’t want to break any more stone and was 
disgusted because the negro dumped another 
barrow of it at his bench. Here is a man 
in great seriousness of mind who demands 
to know how it is that McCann, who was put 





THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


39 


In with himself, is to be discharged on the 
day before and saying that he wishes to go 
out at the same time. And here is a woman, 
all the way from Tennessee, who has come 
to beg that when her son is whipped every 
morning the warden will not lay on the 
strokes too heavily. 


“But, my dear madam, your son is never 
whipped,” exclaims that surprised official. 

“Why, I thought all the prisoners were 
whipped every day,” she says with equal sur¬ 
prise. “They told me so at home.” 

The son is sent for and there is an affec¬ 
tionate meeting with the old lady. He as¬ 


sures her that he has enough to eat, and 
clothes enough to keep warm in and is never 
struck. At the end of the interview the 
woman’s anxieties have disappeared. “I de¬ 
clare, William,” she says to the moonshiner, 
“I believe you are about as well off here as 
you would be anywhere.” 


In Camp: A flemory 


HE pines lift toward 
the stars, those 
southern stars that 
shine like lamps in 
the balmy May. Arc- 
turus rises gorgeous 
through the mystery 
of the' spray. Two 
whip-poor-wills are 
sounding their mel¬ 
ancholy call into the 
night, and far and 
near through the 
forest sounds that susurrus so different 
from the noises of towns: the talk, the sing¬ 
ing, the squall of accordions and tinkle of 
mandolins, the distant laughter, the challenge 
of a sentry, the crunching walk through scrub¬ 
by undergrowth, the clank of scabbards and 
jingle of bridles, the battering of boots on 
the board floor at the canteen, the rumble of 
a freight wagon and roars of its outraged 
driver damning his mules, and—new thing 
in war—the tack-tack of a typewriter at 
headquarters. A city of 50,000 men is here, 
under the wood, so hidden in its shade that 
you may lose yourself in going your way 
from one command to another. Only the 
regiment next door is in sight, and its habi¬ 
tations glow like monstrous fungi, luminous 
from within. We see its tents painted against 
the dark in phosphorescent blotches. The 
candles and lanterns shin^ through the can¬ 
vas without showing any points of light. The 
effect is almost magical. Except for the sen¬ 
tinel who plods by the lighted row, showing 
himself in a form of black when relieved 
against the tents, there Is no movement 
across there by which one might know that 
there are people in the wood. It was a town 
of dirty white when the moon shone. Now 
It is a city of spectral gold. Wait a moment 
and it will vanish, or show at most as a mist 
wreath trembling above the earth. 

Listen! From away to the w'est comes the 
thin note of a bugle. It is caught up here 
and there, coming nearer. A group of offi¬ 
cers sit before one of the tents listening. One 
of them says, “We shall have the star per¬ 
formance now. Be still, you fellows. I want 
to hear this. I always think of home when 
I hear taps.” And as he speaks there comes 



from the camp of the next regiment the soft, 
clear call to rest. 


6, EktinguUh LighU. 



SONG THAT LULLS 
SOLDIERS TO SLEEP.. 


It is the song 
that lulls the 
soldier to his 
sleep. It is 


played above his grave before the rattle 
of sods rouses that wild echo of gun fire 
which is the farewell of his comrades, as his 
soul vaults into the infinite. War and all its 


until you cannot say when it has ceased. 
Our regiment breaks into applause. It does 
that every night while the Southern men are 
neighbors. Neighbors, did I say? Friends! 
Is is not worth the war to bring together the 
several sections of the nation, and give us 
once more a country that knew no sections, 
but that chants the song of the sword under 
the Stars and Stripes? It has been said be¬ 
fore a hundred times, I know, but you cannot 
live in camp and see the meetings of these 
men whose fathers have faced one another 
across the breastworks without thanking hea¬ 
ven that the time of peace had come even 
through a time of war. At night, when the 
light of a hundred fires makes fairy land In 
the forest, the one band in our division—or is 
it the whole army corps?—makes its circuit. 





WAITING TO GO SOME’ERES. 


business are hard and stern, but the life of 
the fighter ends in a poem. No civilized prac¬ 
tice is so feeling as this call of taps into the 
ears that shall never hear It longer. 

The bugler of the Fifth Maryland is an ar¬ 
tist. He plays that simple strain with a cres¬ 
cendo, to the highest note, then lets it fade 


going from camp to camp, among the 'Ver¬ 
monters, the Hooslers, the New Yorkers, the 
Ohio men, the Nebraskans, the rough riders 
from Dakota, the troops from Washington, 
the raw, silent mountaineers from Tennessee, 
the farmers from Missouri and Kansas, the 
Georgia Crackers, playing alternately “Dixie” 


















































THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


4 0 

and “The Star Spangled Banner,” amid the 
huzzas of the rough, blue shirted fellows, and 
winding up in each camp with “America.” 
It makes the tears start in eyes that usually 
look command, when the camp takes up the 
strain, and thousands of big voices are lifted 
in the 

Land where my fathers died. 

Land of the Pilgrims’ pride. 

From every mountain side 
Let Freedom ring. 

nun mnnA almost as 

UHU rnOlVI if we caught the echo 

I nnKflllT starlit crags 

of Lookout, where bat¬ 
tle rolled and thundered years before and 
where the smoke of powder mixed with the 
turmoil of the elements. Strange, then, is 
the fall of silence when the bugle, the clock 
of the forest, intones “taps” and. the noises. 



away at rocks and trees and at his brothers. 
If you are roused by the bang of a gun at 
10 or 11 o’clock you hear comments in the 
tents. “Hallo! Some duck’s got it in the 
neck,” or “Some fool Is trying to run the 
guard,” or “Another Spanish spy!” hut the 
chances are that it is a startled sentinel 
firing at somebody nearer to him than the 
stump he shot—so near. Indeed, that the 
somebody was in his mind. 


Yet the spy theory al- 

WHERE GOSSIP ways has its support- 
AM ART when disturb- 

lO AIM M • ances are heard at a 

distance. Talk of sewing circles as places 
for gossip! Why, they are kindergartens 
compared with camp. Is it that men are 
more inventive than women, or do their- 
anxieties over the misdoing of other people 



ROLL CALL. 


of the canvas city cease. Here and there, I 
for a moment, a candle gleams, and we hear 
the command of the sentry, “Hey, in there! 
Put out that light.” or “Be quiet, Smith!” 
or “No more larking in there, fellows,” with 
a whack on the tent side from the gun bar¬ 
rel. A murmur, then it is as if the forest 
had known no other than its little people of 
the caves and trees. The vast engine that 
may smite and destroy, the throng animated 
by common love of country is still, and the 
spell of the night is upon us who wake. At 
the colonel’s quarters, in the tents of the 
few correspondents who are lucky enough 
to enjoy such luxuries as tents, a faint glow 
persists and pens and pencils race over the 
the sheets that must find way to the tele¬ 
graph station, a mile or two away, in the 
morning. One by one these lights also 
fade and there is only the tread of the sen¬ 
tries pacing their monotonous rounds and 
quickening now and then, when they see 
things that are not there. For guard duty 
is a trial even in a place of no danger and a 
time of peace. The responsibility in war 
time, when a man with nerves is put in a 
lonely spot that may at any instant be swept 
by the rifles of the enemy, is such that he 
may become queer in his understanding. 
Men who think magnify bushes into men; 
they exaggerate a waving limb into a cav¬ 
alry advance, they hear murder in the talk 
of a river—for rivers that babble all day be¬ 
gin to whisper and talk to the dullest ears 
as soon as night shuts down and you can no 
longer see what is really speaking; and once 
in a while a guard will go wild and blaze 


take a wider range? Certain it is that every 
day brought its cock-and-bull tales of cap¬ 
tures and hangings and shootings and 
poisoning of wells and such like industries, 
and one vainly ranged the whole camp to 
find where they came from. These things 
put the correspondents about when they 
were first reported. A Spaniard caught over 
at the spring, putting poison into it! When? 
Where? Who caught him? Where is he 
now? And he’s to be shot at sunrise? 
Where? By whose order? A man pretend¬ 
ing to be a Cuban taken into custody while 
going through the camp of the First Ne¬ 
braska? Proved to be a Spaniard? What 
could he find out that anybody couldn’t have 
told him? Spies? You might as well expect to 
find spies on Broadway in the service of their 
government. One can understand why a 
spy might like to know the plan of a fort or 
the preparations that were forward at some 
of the ports for shipping troops or supplies, 
but- what he could gain by risking himself 
in a camp or other mobilizing center, where 
he would be detected and unpopular, and 
where he could learn nothing of which the 
daily papers did not apprise their readers?— 
well, that is one of the mysteries. But the^ 
whole camp chattered about it just the same. 

Ah, but there were more fearsome things 
in the shadows of the pines than Spanish 
spies. There were things that crept upon 
you in the silences of the night; things that 
while you struck at them had disappeared, 
no man knew whither; things that ran the 
guard and that hid among the tents, stealing 


out only in the dark; things that were feared 
as deadly, and that roused horror among 
the bravest—stealing, noiseless things. 

One night there was an outcry from a 
neighbor regiment. It was half an hour or 
so after taps and the camp had settled for 
the night. The cry was of pain and fear— 
sudden and sharp. It was not the raving 
of a distracted man. and no man badly hurt 
by the bayonet of a guard could have kept 
up the strength of voice. In ten minutes 
we all knew, however, that it was a guard’s 
bayonet which had caused the hubbaboo. 
The victim had either tried to desert or he 
had been out over hours, and in order to es¬ 
cape a turn in the guard house he had tried 
to steal through the lines, back to his tent, 
had refused to answer a challenge, had 
started to run, and a couple of Inches of 
steel in the arm had brought him up with 
a turn. Rumor had this prompt and easy 
way of settling things. 

The Incident wai 

SNAKES ARE NOT dismissed, along 

NICE BEDFELLOWS. 

excitements. A 
day or two later those who were admitted to 
the secret, and it was kept a secret in or¬ 
der to prevent unpleasant and useless appre¬ 
hensions among' the men, knew that a big 
black snake, feeling the warmth of a sol¬ 
dier’s body, as he lay in his tent with his 
shirt open at the throat, had crawled in and 
tried to snuggle down between the blue 
flannel and the man’s skin. He had resist¬ 
ed eviction and tried to fight. The awaken¬ 
ing of the man by feeling the long, cold 
coils of the thing crawling across him was 
sudden, and so displeasing that he could ex¬ 
press himself only in howls and shouts. Ex¬ 
cept this injury to his feelings he was none 
the worse for his adventure. The place was 
alive with snakes when the troops arrived 
there. They rustled in the brush, they 
coiled at the edge of the dirty creek, they 
wriggled in and out of the crevices in the 
ledges. Now and then some fellow in blue 
woull bd seen in the road or a field hold¬ 
ing up with pride a six foot serpent and 
calling to his comrades, “Hey, boys, it’s eels 
for supper to-night.” And, truly, in the 
first days of unpreparedness and hunger, 
any fashion of meat would have been wel¬ 
come in the place. There were many quail 
in the forest, and the pretty call of “Bob 
White” sounded through the hot and quiver¬ 
ing air. Passing an -ppetite-stricken sub¬ 
ject while the quail were calling, I said to 
him, “Listen' How would you like one of 
them on toast?” He clasped his hands across 
his belt, bent over in an imitation of agony, 
and replied, “Never mind the quail, so we can 
get the toast.” 

I fear—ah, I fear—that some of the life in 
this neighborhood came to end by violence. 
Shuffling through the brush one afternoon, 
taking a short cut under the pines, instead 
of going by the devious and dusty road, I 
came suddenly upon a regiment that had 
apparently been ordered out for battle 
drill. The skirmishers were advancing with 
amazing eagerness, widening their lines as 
they came on, waving their rifles and bayo¬ 
nets, yelling with the shrillness that always 
gets into a soldier’s throat on a charge, even 
if it is no more than a practice charge against 
a barn. The fellows were in all sorts of 
dress, some in shirt, trousers and shoes, 
some with blouses, some with hats, some with 
caps, many bareheaded, hut that kind of 
thing was too common for comment. The 
speed and enthusiasm were the surprising 
matters, for drill on hot afternoons after the 












THE ’AMERICAN SOLDIER; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


round of camp work was usually a dull and 
routine performance. Another moment and 
the occasion came to view—a pig. Poor, lit¬ 
tle razorback! He had been scratching over 
the ground as fast as his legs could take him, 
but he was not equal in strategy and endur¬ 
ance to a whole battalion. He was presiently 
under the arm of a big sergeant, both gasp¬ 
ing with open mouths, and no doubt Company 
B had o’le wee nibble of pork that evening. 
It was the first they had had, in that case, 
in severai days. 


"Yes, that’s right. My trousers are falling off 
o’ me for want of something inside to hold 
’em on. I used to have a little knob here,’’ 
patting his abdomen, “that I could hang ’em 
to, but now I want suspenders to hold up my 
belt. I’ve pulled it to the last notch.” “This 
business is the bulliest anti-fat there is. 
Warranted to reduce any stomach if taken 
before breakfast.” “Breakfast! Where’s the 
duifer said breakfast? Why, we haven’t had 
last Wednesday’s supper yet.” It is pleasant 
to record that the appeal on their behalf was 


4 f 


authorities who do the heavy standing 
around had been sufficiently prodded, hut In 
the first few days of over drilling and un¬ 
derfeeding scores of men fell out through 
weakness. It was strange to note the effect 
on a company on the march when a 
man bowled over. Each knew it might bo 
his turn next, but he did not want to think 
about it, so with one accord the company 
would break into song, and, quickening step, 
tramp on. “John Brown’s Body” and 
“Marching Thro’ Georgia” never had more 



GOOD MATURED 
UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 


The patience 
and good na¬ 
ture of these 
fellows un¬ 
der their deprivations w'ere always admirable. 
Even w’hen they grumbled, they did it pictur¬ 
esquely, with a sense of humor. There was 
almost a mutiny in one company after reach¬ 
ing camp. I had been foraging and had se¬ 
cured half a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread, 
which I was about to share with six officers, 
when some of the fellows, hearing of the 
banquet, were so smitten in their vitals that 
they came clamoring to our tent and de¬ 
manded reform. In three days each had eaten 
only a few hard tack and two slices of bacon, 
and they said it was growing monotonous. 
Having shared the monotony I w’as filled with 
sympathy—it was all I could find, except the 
egg, to fill with—and they gathered about to 
state their case, while one of the officers had 
gone to headquarters to see if it was not 
possible to cut some of the red tape that had 
been tied around the supplies and enable the 
men to break their fast. The complaints were 
seldom direct or rough, despite the irritation 
that hunger will beget in a man. “Hey! 
Look at my belt, will you?” one wmuld say, 
“and see where it was Tuesday. Gosh! You 
could stuff a saddle in here now.” And 
thrusting both arms between his cartridge 
belt and his body he would raise it to his 
shoulders and grin. Another would Interrupt: 


successful, and that rations were Issued that 
night without waiting for the sergeant of I 
Company of the Forty-sixth to get back from 
the telegraph station and turn in his report, 
or for any company officer to report the re¬ 
turn, or for any staff officer to report on the 
company’s officer’s report of the report, or for 
anybody to practice the other ways and means 
to keep a hungry man from getting his sup¬ 
per that the devilish ingenuity of militarism 
had devised for the blocking of business and 
the suppression of common sense in that cere¬ 
mony ridden institution, the Army. 

These matters were remedied when the 


ring than when they were shouted by thes» 
fagged, sw'eating, empty fellows. And their 
bunkies were always on hand to pour on the 
face of the sufferer the few drops of warm, 
muddy, precious water in their can¬ 
teens, though it might be hours before 
they would come to water again or be al¬ 
lowed to drink it when they did, for several 
wells in that vicinity were drunk dry, and 
the patriot who owned the only considerable 
springs wanted his government to pay an 
unconscionable sum for a few months’ use of 
them. For a time the only water permitted 
to the troops was the creek that stagnated 






























42 


THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ; STUDIES IN ARMY LIFE. 


along tne hollow ground, and filled though 
It was with mud and decaying vegetation, 
there were no attempts to boil the product. 
The general in command seldom, if ever, left 
his tent to see whether the men were in 
health, or whether the common sanitary reg¬ 
ulations weie observed, as they fearlessly 
and ignorantly were not. It is no wonder 
that sickness and death followed and that 
the flies, like in number to those of Egypt, 
carried infection through the country round¬ 
about. 


I have spoken 
of the life that 
hid and scut¬ 
tled about the 
wood. The most constant visitor from the 
coverts and the trees that rose among the 
tents was the lizard—pretty, nimble, graceful 


HE KNEW WHAT 
A “SCORPEEN” WAS. 


creature. It had to share with the 
serpents the ignominy and dislike that the 
bigger reptile endured, and I recall a lieu¬ 
tenant standing patiently with drawm sword, 
waiting for a “swipe” at a harmless little 
reptile when it should run down from the 
tree he had seen it climb. He was hardly 
to be dissuaded on any plea of the animal’s 
harmlessness. And those who had lived 
among lizards all their lives were the worst 
of all. Just as we have the ancient fear of 
the deadliness of spiders and the childlike 
faith that the beautiful, harmless, help¬ 
ful dragon fly can sting and sew our ears to¬ 
gether. Said an “uncle” who had come 
Into camp on an errand, and who saw me 
approaching one of these lizards that clung 
to the bark of a tree and eyed me cautiously, 
“Don’ go too near dem scorpeens, boss. 
Bern’s awful poison.” 

“Scorpions? What scorpions?” 

“Why, lak dem dere on de tree.” 

‘‘That isn’t a scorpion. That’s a lizard.” 

“ ’Sense me, boss, but ah’ve lived ’round 
hyah all man life, and ah hopes ah knows a 
scorpeen when ah sees one. Bat’s a scor- 
peen, an’ it’s full o’ poison.” 

In cases like that you have to begin at 
the primary school. We smile at the old 
darkey, but how many of us hold beliefs 
that are just as wild, and that interfere just 
as much wdth our enjoyment of the beauty 
that is in the earth and the human mind! 
We have missionaries to preach the gospel, 
but where are the missionaries that shall go 
forth preaching common sense? 

It Is at night 

WHEN THE SOLDIER in camp, when 

the soldier is off 
duty, that you 
come to know him best, A jolly care free 
lad he Is. A week hence he may be dead on 
a foreign strand, with a piece of Spanish lead 
In his heart. Boes he think of it? Yes, he 
can’t help that, but does he care? Listen to 
th* musical hum of the woods and you can 


IS AT HIS BEST 


hardly believe so. It is his high health and 
youth that empower him to put aside dark 
fancies and live playfully in the present. So 
he strums his mandolin and he shuffles a 
dance in the company street and he has a 
boxing bout with the crack fighter in the 
next company, or he plays pranks on the 
stupid ones and the early sleepers, and he 
cracks his jokes and he gets up variety 
shows in the light of the cook’s fire or of a 
couple of borrowed lanterns and now and 
then he gets a day off by going on guard 
through the night without his coat, and com¬ 
ing down with pneumonia. This sends him 
to the hospital, which consists of a space of 
bare ground with a tent over it. He has a 
quinine pill—the only medicine in camp for 
some days—and hard tack three times a day. 
Pneumonia, in Georgia, in summer! Isn’t 
it ridiculous! He and the surgeon think so, 
for pretty soon he is in the ranks again and 
is going through the manual out in the blis¬ 
tering fields. 

It is at night, too, that we find who they 
are who make this army. Gathered about the 
tents or lounging under the trees are the 
fellows who in their dusty trousers, wilted 
campaign hats and open throated shirts we 
would say, off hand, had been recruited from 
the down town wards of the city: the iron 
moulders, the ice men, the truck drivers, the 
bricklayers, the open air men and workers. 
Well, most of them are that, although mixed 
among are farmers and clerks and tramps— 
tramps who have not given over their habit, 
w^hen they meet you in remoter parts of the 
reservation, of appealing: “Say, boss, can you 
spare us a nickel? I ain’t had nothin’ to eat 
since yesterday.” He does not have to do 
that, because he gets the same credit for 
beer at the canteen that is given to the rich 
man’s son, and as to whisky, it is too far to 
hope for, even if a nickel would buy it. 

The tramp is evidently 

NOTHING TO DO discouraged to find 

BUT JUST WORK. 

there is more to do 
than to walk and that he must earn his 
“hand-out.” It is drill, drill, drill, from sun¬ 
up to dark, with guard duty every now and 
again at night, and the guard tent for mis¬ 
behavior; it is a sharp word when he shirks 
at the setting-up exercise, which he must 
share with the others before breakfast; it 
is copious perspiration when he scrambles 
through the brush in battle drill, and powder 
in his nose and a bruised shoulder when he 
takes his turn at target practice; It is scant 
food for the present and long waits between 
meals; It is no hay to sleep on, no poultry to 
catch, no farmers’ wives to wheedle or ter¬ 
rorize, no freight cars to escape in; and the 
ex-tramp has no conceit of himself as an 
element in this show of force and pictur- 
^queness. When regiments march out at 


sunset and in half mile lines extend down 
the field in dim perspective, drums and bugles 
rattling and ringing, flags tossing as the 
bearers mafeh to place, swords and trappings 
glinting and a magically red light is carried 
over the view in the sun-soaking dust raised 
by the tramplings of these thousands, our 
brother, the hobo, is not recognizable, nor 
can he recognize himself. He is now a son 
of the republic—not its outcast. Perhaps 
he wishes he were back on the road, begging 
his way through the land, but his clothes 
and his mission disguise him wholesomely. 

In the service of the nation all men are 
equal. In this same company with Frayed 
Fagin are two descendants of a President 
of the United States, a real estate operator, 
who can write six figures on his check; a cook 
from the principal hotel in New York, two or 
three college lads, some boys from the dry 
goods counters, who still ask permission to 
go to the creek and wash their hands before 
eating! In khaki and blue, one is as good 
as any other, and sometimes better. What 
a many social pretension® would be punc¬ 
tured, what a many reputations would be 
proved unfounded, what a many privileges 
would be recalled, if the candidates had to 
pass muster as privates in the Army before 
taking degrees from Mrs. Grundy. Aye, and 
what small men would enlarge, what weak 
men would grow strong, what humble lives 
would find new levels of use and command, 
when they had the chance to align them¬ 
selves with the defenders of the people! The 
glamor of soldiering is not merely in the 
bravery of color and glitter and dash and 
music. It is more than this; it is a glamor 
of courage, self-sacrifice and worth. 

Through the night, while the pines sway 
against the stars and their breathings are soH 
and vocal, these thousands stretched on the 
hard, strength-giving earth, are in their 
sleep the symbol of great peace. The whip- 
poor-will calls to the rising moon, but only 
the sentries hear. Heavily go the hours 
with those few plodding, wakeful men, and 
they rejoice when light kindles above the 
trees and the shrill bras.s summons their 
comrades to the toil and the dullness, but 
also to the joy and the thrill of another day. 




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E^agle 




Guides: 


Guide to New York City. 

Guide to Paris. 

Guide to Washington. 

Guide to Pan-American Exposi¬ 
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Guide to Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

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The DAILY EAGLE 
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Paris Bureau—53 Rue Cambon, Paris, France. 
CHICAGO—Boyce Bldg., 112 Dearborn St. 


Borough of Brooklyn: 

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154 GREENPOINT AV. 

(Tel. 2235b Main.) 

FLATBUSH—801 Fiatbush Av. 

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BATH BEACH—Bath Av.nr. Bay 19th. 

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Borough of Queens: 

JAMAICA—3 Herriman Av. 

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Borough of Manhattan: 
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TRIBUNE BUILDING. 

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Borough of the Bronx: 
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BUFFALO-233 Main St LONDON—1 Arundel SL, Strand. 


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"^he 


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E>agte*4: "Popular Guldens. 




Educational 

Institutions. 


This book was issued for the pur¬ 
pose of providing the public with 
a complete list of local and gen¬ 
eral educational institutions. In¬ 
valuable to anyone seeking this 
^ ^ ^ I information. 




Summer 

Resorts. 


The Brooklyn Eagle Summer Resort 
Supplement. In magazine form. Con¬ 
tains most complete list of places at 
which to spend your vacation. Hotels, 
boarding houses, etc. 






New York. 


The Eagle Guide to New York City 
and suburbs. Greater New York 
thoroughly described in a complete 
and valuable little book. 






Paris. 


The Eagle Guide to Paris is a very' 
complete and valuable book for visit¬ 
ors to the French capitol. 


^ ^ ^ -- 





The National Capitol and its many at¬ 
tractions written up in a handsome little 
red volume. This guide, as well as the 
others of the Eagle series, has received 
many words of commendation. 




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end 

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